A Review of Zimbabwean Agricultural Sector following the Implementation of the Land Reform

Overall Impacts of Fast Track Land Reform Programme

Sam Moyo

Second Draft

13 May 2004

GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMSAGRITEX Agricultural Department of Technical Extension ALB Agricultural Labour Bureau ARDA Agricultural Rural Development AuthorityAREX Agricultural Research and Extension (formed by amalgamation of AGRITEX and DR&SS)CEDAW Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against WomenCFU Commercial Farmers Union CSC Cold Storage Commission DNR Department of Natural Resources DR&SS Department of Research and Specialists Services ESAP Economic Structural Adjustment Programme FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation FEWSNet Femine Early Warning System NetworkFCTZ Farm Community Trust Zimbabwe FTLRP Fast Track Land Resettlement ProgrammeGAPWUZ General Agriculture and Plantations Workers Union of Zimbabwe GMB Grain Marketing Board GoZ Government of Zimbabwe LAS Land Information Systems LSCF Large Scale Commercial Farmers MOHCW Ministry of Health and Child Welfare MOLARR Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement MT Metric Tonne NGO Non- Governmental OrganisationNR Natural Region PAM Policy Analysis Matrix PDL Poverty Datum Line PLRC Presidential Land Review CommitteePSP Pan Seasonal Pricing PTP Pan Traditional Pricing RDC Rural District Council SADC Southern African Development Community SME Small to Medium Enterprises SSCF Small Scale Commercial Farmers UNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeZANU PF Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front ZIMACE Zimbabwe Agricultural Commodity Exchange

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS.............................................................................i1.0 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................12.0 LAND ACQUISITION PATTERNS.............................................................2

2.1 Gazetting of farms.............................................................................................22.2 Compensation Status.........................................................................................3

3.0 LAND ALLOCATION PATTERNS AND NEW FARM STRUCTURE.............53.1 Sectoral Distribution After the Fast-Track Land Reform..................................53.2 Geographic Distributional Outcomes of FTLRP................................................63.3 Social Distribution: Emerging Agrarian Structure...........................................7

4.0 KEY PRODUCTION ISSUES AND IMPACTS.............................................94.1 Agricultural Production, Markets and Profitability...........................................94.1.1 Impacts of FTLRP on Agricultural Production...............................................94.1.2 New Labour Process....................................................................................114.1.3 Markets........................................................................................................144.1.4 Profitability...................................................................................................154.2 Agricultural Services: Extension, Infrastructure and Machinery...................17

5.0 SOCIAL IMPACTS OF FTLRP..................................................................225.1 Food Security..................................................................................................225.2 Vulnerable Groups...........................................................................................24

6.0. NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS.................256.1 Natural resources utilisation policy and programme.....................................256.2 Special endangered species project................................................................256.3 Tobacco curing woodlots for A1 and A2 areas................................................256.4 Natural resources based land use models and farm sizes..............................256.5 Gold panning management policy...................................................................256.6 Natural resources utilisation extension policy and strategy...........................256.7 Natural resources planning.............................................................................25

7.0 SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS...................................................257.1 Overall Recommendation................................................................................257.2 Land Acquisitions............................................................................................257.3 Land Allocations..............................................................................................257.4 Production Patterns.........................................................................................257.5 Labour Processes............................................................................................257.6 Agricultural Services: Extension, Infrastructure and Machinery...................257.7 Profitability and Markets.................................................................................257.8 Social Services................................................................................................257.9 Natural Resources and Environmental Impacts.............................................25

BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................25

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

The second phase of the Land Redistribution and Resettlement programme in the form of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP), which started in 2000, has created an expanded number and array of small, medium and large scale farms, and effectively transferring ownership from the minority, white farmers to new indigenous farmers. A significant drop in agricultural production and food availability in particular, and in economic activity in general have accompanied this change.

Between 1980 and 1999 Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector grew steadily, albeit slowly. Producing a diverse range of domestic and export commodities, agriculture contributed over 40% of national exports and 18% of GDP, employed 30% of the formal labour force (350,000 full-time and part-time workers) and 70% of the population. Its intricate agro-industrial linkages under-girded 60% of the industrial base and close to 50% of GDP growth depended directly and indirectly on agriculture and agro-industry. Overall economic growth since 1980 was lacklustre.

Agriculture during the 1990’s was increasingly liberalized through structural adjustment macro-economic policies, and agricultural pricing and marketing were decontrolled. Greater incentives led to the growth of diversified traditional and non-traditional commodities. Food production was generally self-sufficient, with some imports, especially during drought periods. Agricultural production however depended heavily on imported inputs and machinery, which relied on stable export revenues, external commercial credit and balance of payments support. Production remained vulnerable to 5 yearly droughts, especially in the peasant sector, which while producing 70% of the staple foods (maize, groundnuts, etc) relies on rainfed farming, as it holds less than 5% of national irrigation resources.

To address the lack of social justice and the problems of inefficiency that underlay this agrarian structure, gradualistic land reforms were initiated up to 1996. Sporadic “illegal” land occupations sought to re-dress the land

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imbalances. In 1997, the GoZ initiated a process of radical land reform based upon extensive compulsory land acquisition and redistribution, targeting 5 million hectares for transfer. This occurred in the context of a growing fiscal deficits and exchange rate collapse, following the allocation of increased pensions to war veterans, and related political conflict within the ruling party. However it was only in the year 2000, when political conflicts grew, that radical compulsory land acquisitions began, and the land targeted for transfer was shifted from 5 to 10 million hectares by 2001. This acquisition process was accompanied by extensive land occupations led by war veterans, peaking at around 1,000 LSCF properties occupied in the year 2000. Eventually over 6,000 properties were gazetted for acquisition and allocated by GoZ to approximately 135,000 households and small to medium commercial farmers by mid-2003.

Since 1997 shifts in Zimbabwe’s land reform, agricultural and economic policies, and its relations with the international community, including external financial institutions, have accompanied dramatic economic decline. The economy faces crisis hyper-inflation, foreign currency and commodity shortages and hoarding, the erosion of incomes, increased food and social services, insecurity, the halving of production in the real economic sector, and reduced employment. Severe droughts between 2001 and 2002 worsened this situation. Economic policy became increasingly dirigiste from 2000 with greater state control of commodity prices and markets (including interest rates) and greater control and rationing of foreign currency, alongside expansionary monetary policies and deficit financing. These processes have led to a downward trend of increased economic informalisation and parallel markets, and to reduced incentives for production in most spheres. Increased political conflict since 2000, and the reduction of external international support since 1998 (balance of payments, targeted aid and commercial finance), due to differences over land reform and economic policies, as well as over the evolving governance system, exacerbated the economic crisis and political tensions.

This papers assesses the overall impacts of the government’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme on the agricultural sector. More specifically, this paper assesses trends in agricultural production, food security, the distributional

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outcomes of the FTLRP and the impacts of FTLRP on the social vulnerable groups.

2.0 LAND ACQUISITION PATTERNS

The government’s desire to resettle people fast meant that land allocations were being made even before the legal process of acquiring land had been completed. Thus, some of the resettled farms are still under sections 5 or 81 orders and are yet to be confirmed in the administrative courts, while others have been confirmed but still have to be paid for in full. A clear assessment of the acquisition process is essential to gauge what needs to be done to complete the process as well as to identify potential areas of conflict over ownership, since the current information is unclear.

2.1 Gazetting of farmsThe Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) land acquisition policy targets have become legally ensconced at 11 million hectares in the 2004 amendments to the Land Acquisition Act (1992) suggesting that almost the entire large-scale commercial farm(s) (LSCF) lands are targeted for transfer and/or that land tenure policy has veered towards converting most agricultural freehold land to leasehold land. According to the latest GoZ assessments (presented at the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) in December 2003), by 3 November 2003, 6,712 farms covering an area of 12,387,571 hectares nationwide had been gazetted (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1: Gazetted farmsProvince Number of Farms Area (Ha) % of landMashonaland West 1,489 1,814,270 14.65Mashonaland East 1,316 1,402,116 11.32Mashonaland Central 876 976,655 7.88Manicaland 755 682,257 5.51Midlands 699 1,350,483 10.9Matabeleland North 638 2,043,764 16.5Matabeleland South 492 2,129,171 17.19Masvingo 444 1,992,158 16.08TOTAL 6,712 12,387,571 100Source: ZANU PF Conference Central Committee Report, 2003

1 Land Acquisition Act (1992), with its amendments of 2000, 2002, and 2004, provides for due legal and administrative process through sections 5 and 8. Section 5 requires the acquiring authority to give public and personally serve notice to landowners and interested parties of the intention to acquire land. Section 8 requires that orders to confirm acquisition in court be served on the same.

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However, the Presidential Land Review Committee (PLRC) (in August 2003) estimated that government had acquired 6,422 farms covering 10,839,108 hectares. Government officials attributed this variance to time differences between the two assessments. The residual differences arise from weakness in the land acquisition data management system, especially in the entry statistical analyses, exacerbated by the frequent changes occasioned by the need to gazette most farms, which are successfully contested in courts or those whose time-bound notices and orders expired before hearings. The amendments in 2004 of the Land Acquisition Act (1992) are intended by the GoZ to remove the procedural obstacles to rapid gazetting and, confirmation of acquisitions and increase the bargaining position of the GoZ in its negotiations over former LSCF landowner retentions and delistings. The constitutionality of this was however challenged by an adverse report of parliament although it was defeated.

2.2 Compensation StatusThere exists contradictory information on the compensation status of gazetted farms from different sources. For instance, according to the Financial Gazette (12 December 2003) about 300 out of the more than 4,500 farms compulsory acquired by the government have received compensation. This is almost double the figure (156 farms) reported at the ZANU-PF Conference in early December 2003 (see Table 2.2). Approximately 3,310 farms, or less than half the total large-scale commercial farms have been inspected for valuation and compensation purposes. According to the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), the government has so far paid $46 million in compensation and that outstanding payments are in excess of $72 billion.2 While another CFU breakaway farmers grouping Justice for Agriculture (JAG) is leading a proposed law suit to compel the GoZ to pay an estimated £4 billion compensation for improvements on acquired farms.3

Table 3.2: Compensation on fixed improvements Progress towards Compensation Number of

farms Percentage of Total No. of gazetted farms

No. of farmers valued for compensation 3,310 49.3 Farms not yet evaluated 3,402 50.72 Financial Gazette, 12 December 20033 Financial Gazette, 24 October 2003

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No. of farms that can be compensated with available resources

500 7.4

LSCF compensation collected 156 2.3Total farms gazzeted 6,712Source: Zanu PF Conference Central Committee Report, 2003

In contrast, government has over the last two years set aside a total of Z$8 billion for farm improvement compensation, Z$4.5 billion of which was pledged in the 2003-04 budget (ZANU PF, 2003). Whereas government estimates the Z$4.5 billion would be able to compensate 500 farms, the CFU estimates the Z$8 billion at current inflation influenced prices can only compensate improvements on 30 farms. This represents a huge gap in perceptions between the two sides bringing to doubt prospects for a speedy resolution to the acquisition process. The negotiation process has not been helped by threats issued by the agriculture minister Dr. Made that the government may soon disburse the money accumulated for compensation to resettled black farmers if displaced farmers refuse to accept government-assessed compensation (Financial Gazette, 12 December 2003). The wide gap between what government is offering and what farmers claim is the true value of their improvements (an 800 percent difference) indicates settlement is still far from realisation. Thus the slow pace in conclusion of land acquisition process has been the disagreements on valuation of farm improvements and lack of resources on the part of government to offer compensation.

In addition to disagreement on farm improvement compensation another point of disagreement likely to further delay conclusion of land transfers is the issue of compensation for farm equipment. Under Statutory Instrument 273A of 2003, published in an extraordinary gazette on Monday 15 December 2003, the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement now has the right to compulsorily acquire any farm equipment or material (such as fertilisers and chemicals) not currently being used for agricultural purposes, on any acquired land. This latest move was condemned by the commercial farmers as espoused in press statement released on the 18th of December 2003 by the President of the CFU (Doug Taylor-Freeme):"This latest move is yet another way for government to dispossess farmers, under the guise of providing farm equipment for new farmers. That the Statutory Instrument carries clauses saying

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equipment will be valued by members of the public service who the Ministry feels are qualified to do so, and owners will be compensated for their equipment over five years, is meaningless…".

3.0 LAND ALLOCATION PATTERNS AND NEW FARM STRUCTURE

This section assesses the beneficiaries of land reform from a perspective of those who recently been allocated land, the excluded and those who have remained with land prior to 2002. To accomplish this, empirical evidence on patterns of land allocation among various types of beneficiaries in terms of their socio-economic status across the various agro-ecological regions (land quality variations) and provinces (the ethno-regional factor) are assessed based on various studies and reports, official data and field based probing and samples of selected data including the latest verification exercise of the PLRC.

3.1 Sectoral Distribution After the Fast-Track Land ReformBefore the PLRC Report (2003), official GoZ data indicated that over 225,000 new settlers had benefited from the redistribution of about 10 million hectares, suggesting that about 52% of the land was allocated to smaller scale A1 and 48% to larger A2 beneficiaries, against GoZ guidelines of a 60:40 split between A1 and A2. However, the PLRC (2003) reported that 127,192 households in A1 and 7,260 A2 new farmers have been allocated and taken up land, amounting to a total of 134,452 settlers (table 3.1).

Table 3.1: The distribution of land Holdings after Fast Track (as at 31/07/2003)Land Holding Category

FarmsNumbers

Farms size (%)

Area (Ha)

Area (%)

Settlers Take Up

Unallocated land

A1 2,652 32.7 4,231,080 15.7 127,192 97%A2 1,672 20.6 2,198,814 8.2 7,260 66%Communal - - 16,400,00

060.9 -

Church 64 0.8 41,902 0.2 45Whites 1,377 17.0 1,175,607

* 4.4 1,323 ?

Indigenous 1,440 17.8 938,723 3.5 1,340Corporate 743 9.2 1,364,173 5.1 509Parastatals 153 1.9 572,786 2.1 42Total 8,101 100 26,923,0

85100 137,71

12,8 million (367 farms)

Source: PLRC, 2003; *- This is 3% of the total agricultural land.

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Thus about 6% of actual beneficiaries in number got approximately 25% of the land, through the A2 scheme, while 94% of the beneficiaries received the rest—approximately 4.2 million hectares. With estimated take up rates of 97% in A1 and 66% in A2, the figures suggest that potential beneficiaries could be 131,126 in A1 and 11,000 in A2. Whilst, the latest government figures released in November 2003 indicated that A1 allocations totalled 130,641 and 16,400 A2 beneficiaries (GoZ, 2003). Officials in the Lands Department attribute the discrepancy in the beneficiaries to two main reasons. The first reason is that allocations have continued since the audit exercise by the PLRC leading to increases in the number of beneficiaries. The second reason is that the PLRC did not include peri-urban plots among the A2 plots the majority of which were allocated in the three Mashonaland Provinces.

3.2 Geographic Distributional Outcomes of FTLRPThe three Mashonaland (Central, East and West) provinces accommodated 46% of all A1 beneficiaries and 74% of the A2 beneficiaries (table 3.2). Masvingo settled 18% of the A1 beneficiaries on 16% of the area earmarked for the A1 scheme, and 11% of the A2 beneficiaries on 34% of land allocated for the A2 scheme. Some provinces had higher A2 land allocations than others. For instance Midlands allocated only 6.3% (106 of the 1,672 farms) to the A2 Scheme. In Mashonaland East 54.7% (302,511 ha) of the total distributed land of 553,441 ha was allocated to A1, compared to 45.3% allocated to A2 (table 3.2). Evidence indicates that the provincialisation of land allocations, was not so universal for A2’s, but was a predominant tendency in A1 that tended to favour people who originate from given communal areas within the provinces.

Table 3.2: Allocation patterns and take up rates per provinceProvince Model A1 Model A2 No. of households/

beneficiaries%Take up rates

No. of farms

hectares

No. of farms

hectares

A1 A2 A1 A2

Midlands 306 513,672 (12%)

106 181,966 (8%)

16,169 (13%)

229 (3%) 90 48

Masvingo 211 686,612 (16%)

170 753,300 (34%)

22,670 (18%)

773 (11%)

95 79

Manicaland

246 195,644 (5%)

138 77,533 (4%)

11,019 (9%)

463 (6%) 92 42

Mat. South

226 683,140 (16%)

65 191,697 (9%)

8,923 (7%) 271 (4%) 100 100

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Mat. North

258 543,793 (13%)

65 142,519 (6%)

9,901 (8%) 191 (3%) 120 94

Mash. East

382 302,511 (7%)

319 250,930 (11%)

16,702 (13%)

1,646 (23%)

93 45

Mash. West

670 792,513 (19%)

568 369,995 (17%)

27,052 (21%)

2,003 (28%)

97 50

Mash. Central

353 513,195 (12%)

241 230,874 (10%)

14,756 (12%)

1,684 (23%)

89 73

Total 2,652 4,231, 080

1,672 2,198,814

127,192 7,260 97 66

Source: PLRC, 2003In relation to geographic location, such as nearness to communal areas which provides social and physical relocation advantage or to peri-urban areas which provide market and commuter advantages, clear patterns of concentration of land allocations between A1 and A2 schemes are discernible. Those A1 schemes nearer communal areas have mostly communal area people while in peri-urban areas more A2 schemes have many more urban people. In Goromonzi for instance, case study research (by Marimira, 2002, quoted by Mukamuri 2003), found extremely varied patterns of land allocation to beneficiaries between A1 and A2 schemes. In an A1 scheme nearer the communal areas, 98% of its beneficiaries were from the adjacent communal lands, while 49% of the beneficiaries on A1 schemes nearer to Ruwa, Chitungwiza and Harare were from these urban areas.

3.3 Social Distribution: Emerging Agrarian StructureTable 3.3 shows the emerging agrarian class structure. This is by nature an imprecise task, and more so in the absence of new census data and household surveys. But the task remains essential, and its objective is to capture the differential capabilities (and vulnerabilities) of capitalists in the accumulation process. The basic criterion is land size, which is then adjusted to account for tenure type, agro-ecological potential, and technical capacity. Tenure type becomes particularly significant in accounting for the disadvantages of communal and A1 tenure in the mobilization of resources. Agro-ecology varies in Zimbabwe between five Natural Regions (NR I-V), from the more fertile lands of relatively lesser hectarage per farm and intensive cropping, to the less fertile lands of larger farm sizes and extensive cropping (small grains) and livestock/wildlife management. The level and type of technology thus also differs across the natural regions.

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The ‘peasant’ category refers to petty-commodity production on Communal and A1 resettlement land; this now accounts for 97.8% of total farms, on 66.6% of total land. There is class differentiation within this category, which is not captured here, and which is driven inter alia by agro-ecological variation, off-farm incomes, and local political power. Whether under adverse or positive economic conditions, this differentiation is expected to continue, as is the operation of informal land markets under the aegis of traditional authority. It is notable that the institution of chiefdom has not been challenged in the process of mobilization for land reform.

While ‘small capitalists’ historically comprise below 10% of the peasantry in communal areas and they employ substantial non-family labour from other peasants and the remaining landless there. We have not segmented them into the category due to insufficient data. We may only note here that they would be of great political significance, as the are likely to return to dominate the Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union, together with the small capitalists on A2 land. What we have also done tentatively is merge the ‘small capitalist’ category with that of ‘middle capitalists’ as there is much overlap across the natural regions. Generally, small capitalists range from 30 to 100 hectares, and middle capitalists from 40 to 150 hectares, and they employ substantially more hired labour than provided from their own family. The important point to note is that there is likely to be ongoing reconfiguration of these two categories, as the two compete. Notably, middle capitalists have great advantage in the land bidding and accumulation process, by virtue of their better access to other means of production (credit and technology), to contacts and information, and to the policy-making process itself.

‘Large capitalist’ farms range from 150 to 1,500 hectares, depending on natural region, and enjoy even better access to economic and political resources. At present, middle and large capitalists are in political alliance under the banner of ‘indigenisation’, seeking to appropriate the remaining land and also to tailor the agricultural policy framework to their needs. Their vision is of a differentiated agricultural sector, in which middle/large capitalists specialise in the production of high-value commodities for export (tobacco and hybrid beef) and peasants in

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the production of grains for domestic consumption. The contradictions between small and middle/large farmers and between internal/external orientation will thus accentuate as they bid over public and private resources (infrastructure, water, credit) and policy instruments (interest rates policy, foreign exchange allocations). It is important finally to note that there is a significant process of reorganization of capital underway across the economic sectors, by which the emerging agrarian bourgeoisie is joining forces, economically and politically, with the nascent indigenous bourgeoisie in transport and retail, and most importantly with finance, which has seen the emergence of a dozen new indigenous institutions. Together, they recognize the significance of agricultural production and distribution to their own reproduction. Importantly the entire range of these capitalist farmers pays wages (whether below or above regulated minimum rates) that are well below the current poverty datum line.

Table 3.3: Emerging Agrarian Class StructureClass Land Tenure Households/Farms

Number % total

Farm Area Hectares % total Ave. (ha)

Proletariat in transition(employed, casuals,unemployed)

Resident on farms Relocated to CAs Stranded

(350,000) n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.

Peasantry(semi-proletariat, small capital)

CAs and A1 1,300,000 97.8 20,631,080

66.6 13

Small/middle capital Old SSCFNew A2Sub-total

8,0005,76013,760

0.60.41.0

1,238,7001,798,8143,037,514

4.05.89.8

155312

Large capital Large A2Black LSCFWhite LSCFSub-total

1,5001,4401,3324,163

0.10.10.10.3

400,000938,7231,175,6072,514,330

1.33.03.88.1

267651.9882.6

Corporate capital CorporateParastatalChurch

74315364

0.030.010.005

1,365,173572,78641,902

4.41.80.1

1,837.4 3,743.7654.7

Land in transition Unallocated 2,800,000 9.0Total 1,318,566 100.0 29,038,41

5100.0

Source: Calculated from PLRC, 2003(i) Peasants : land sizes range between 1-30 ha, depending on natural region, with family

arable land ranging from 0.2-5.0 ha, plus common grazing land. ‘Communal’ land and A1 are of the same tenure type; the former refers to pre-existing lands, the latter to resettlement lands.

(ii) Small and middle capitalists : comprise ‘old’ farmers from the colonial period and ‘new’ black farmers, including those with post-independence allocations on ‘small-scale commercial farms’ (SSCF) and the fast-track beneficiaries. ‘Small capitalist’ farms range between 30-100 ha, depending on natural region, while ‘middle capitalist’ farms range between 40-150 ha, again depending on natural region.

(iii) Large capitalists : farms range between 150-400 ha in NR I/II to 1,500 ha in NR IV

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(iv) Corporate farms : range from 1,000 to above1,500 ha, but few are near the lower hectarage mark.

The picture that is emerging is of a significantly broadened home market, including a larger peasantry and a larger black capitalist class. Further research would need to examine three interrelated process: agro-industrial re-organisation and consolidation of the black capitalist class; differentiation within the peasantry, including the trajectories of rich (small capitalist) and poor (semi-proletarians) peasants; and the labour process which underpins both the above and which will continue to be characterized by functional dualism.

4.0 KEY PRODUCTION ISSUES AND IMPACTS

4.1 Agricultural Production, Markets and Profitability

4.1.1 Impacts of FTLRP on Agricultural ProductionA major agricultural production shift occurred during the FTLRP period, and this affected the major crops and livestock differently, particularly those produced by large-scale white farmers. The 4 main LSCF field crops (wheat, tobacco, soyabeans and sunflower) experienced both reduced area plantings and output volumes (30-70%) indicating partly the low uptake and use of land in the Highlands, especially among A2 farmers. The fall in the average yield of wheat reflected the deficiencies in the use of irrigation resources among new farmers, many of whom were producing their first ever wheat crop. The average yields for soyabeans have also been on the decline, given that much of it was produced by new farmers with limited inputs. Sunflower production, mainly an LSCF preserve, recorded the sharpest decrease of 87% in the planted area between 2002/3 and the 90s average, leading to an equal drop in its volume of output during the FTLRP period. Again this pattern led to shortages of cooking oils and related products on the market and broader based food insecurity. This has meant that production of wheat and oilseeds in particular have deteriorated, and occasioned the current trend of food insecurity. The performance of the main plantation and other export crops (tea, coffee, citrus and forest products) was less affected because these areas were not redistributed during the FTLRP, because of policy and legal protections directed at agro-industrial estates.

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The main crops (maize, small grains, groundnuts, cotton) produced by smallholder (communal and resettlement areas) farmers for food and cash experienced reduced output despite the marginal increase in the areas planted. The decline in the volume of maize output resulted from the crop failures occasioned by consecutive droughts during the FTLRP and reduced fertiliser usage. The production of small grains declined reflecting the decreased profitability occasioned by low prices.

Wildlife based tourism is an important land user, whose output in terms of tourist visits and numbers of private wildlife ranchers, declined during the FTLRP. Fifteen percent of national area (5.8 million ha) comprises state parks and forests, and since these dominate wildlife based tourism, land redistribution had a marginal effect on them. But some of the LSCF conservancies were redistributed to both A1 and A2 settlers. In general tourist visits declined to 30% capacity due to the negative publicity on Zimbabwe during the FTLRP, the conversion of some private wildlife conservancies to mixed farming operations and wildlife poaching. Production patterns of forest products on woodland, plantations, and gazetted forests, which cover about 2.1 million hectares of Zimbabwe, mostly in Matebeleland, Mashonaland West and Manicaland, were also less affected by land transfers,4 as 42% of these belongs to the state and 54% to private concerns5.

The national population of beef cattle decreased during FTLRP as a result of increased beef cattle slaughtering and sales which reduced the LSCF herd size by about 65%. However, since 1997, there has been an increase in the national herd size due to the increases in the smallholder sector, although beef off-take and revenue in these areas is relatively lower than in LSCF areas, due to various livestock management deficiencies. These changes affected domestic and export beef supply scene, as 85% of the officially marketed beef and most of the exports had been derived from the LSCF.

4 Of the 155,853 ha set aside for exotic plantations, at least 110,000 hectares are planted. At least 71% of the planted area is under pines, 13% under eucalyptus, and 16% under wattle. 5 GoZ policy is to maintain the current large estates under exotic forest plantations, in which new indigenous actors/producers enter plantation farming through corporate of equity redistribution.

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The dairy industry declined in terms of both milk production, number of producers and total dairy herd. National milk production declined over the past five years, dropping by an average 23%. There has been a general shortage of milk and milk related products on the domestic market, particularly in the 2002/3 period. The production of small livestock also declined.

The optimal utilisation of available technologies especially for the peasantry was constrained by limited access to inputs, such as machinery, equipment, and infrastructure, seeds, fertilisers and chemicals, thus limiting the areas planted to most crops at the back of droughts which scorched planted crops. The failure to utilise existing experienced farm labour, due to new farmer capacity limitations and conflicts with farm workers was also a missed opportunity. The capacity of public agencies to meet the increased demand for agricultural knowledge services (extension, research, market information, etc) was limited because agencies such as AREX and Veterinary services were overwhelmed by the changes and under financed. These services, which are free for peasants, could not be met by the state, while the private sector did not expand their agricultural services or their coverage to new farmers. The financial resources required to enhance production were limited, with private sector unwilling to shoulder the risk of new farming operations, without financial security, while GoZ support schemes were inadequate. This mainly affected the old and new smallholders who were not able to finance their operations, given that their own savings are limited.

4.1.2 New Labour ProcessThe employment status of former farm workers is critical to assessing the impacts of FTLRP since it defines the scope of their new livelihoods. Losses in farm worker employment, as well as job retention in the remaining LSCFs, were encountered in the agrarian sector. Moreover, it appears that such former farm worker job losses could change after this transitional period when uptake of land and establishment of production become normalised.

There tends to be an overestimation of the total number of former farm workers employed in the large-scale commercial farming sector (especially the fulltime

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group). Whilst some aspects have been understated (for instance 50% were casual labourers), the majority of farm job losses have been measured as permanent job losses. There is lack of differentiation of the job losses in terms of quality, given that the majority of former farm workers are unskilled and very few skilled jobs have been lost. This leads to an overstating of the loss of skills as a result of the FTLRP.

The retention of 85,000 or half of the former fulltime LSCF farm workers within the remaining LSCF sector (Magaramombe, 2003 quoting CFU, 2003) is not widely recognised. Furthermore, it seems that up to 15% of the remaining half the former farm workers may have been re-engaged, but in the new diverse farm structure (model A2, state farms, indigenous and remaining LSCF sectors). Most of the job losses by former farm workers were concentrated among some regions (agro-ecological and provinces) and commodities, in the Eastern Highlands and the Lowveld where sugar, tea, coffee and forestry are located. These had a higher concentration of farm workers, and were largely not affected by the land acquisition programme and still retain most of their labour force. While other commodities (maize, beef, wheat etc.) with lower farm worker concentrations, mainly in the Mashonaland provinces, incurred the most job losses.

Another overstated aspect is the income loss of former LSCF farm workers. The wages of the majority were below the PDL even before the land acquisition programme, meaning that there were very few viable livelihoods among them. There has been loss of useful skills and experience among former farm workers in the new resettlement areas because of their low re-engagement on new farms. The majority of farm labourers in new resettlement areas are ‘new farm workers’ with agricultural experience limited to communal area farming. The size of the potential farm worker labour force (employed and unemployed) has expanded because of the bringing in of new agricultural wage labour.

Both new and former farm workers in model A2 schemes are less protected in terms of wages and job security than those in other LSCF sub-sectors (indigenous, state and remaining LSCF farms). In general, the model A2 farms

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tend to pay lower wages and have poor employment contracts, although there are cases of good working conditions to be found. Some of the poor working conditions that have been reported in new resettlement areas include the arbitrary firing of farm workers, lack of protective clothing, lack of leave days and lack of consideration for special needs of female workers (Parliament of Zimbabwe, 2003).

New labour relations have emerged in resettlement farms. The ‘domestic government’ of the old LSCF sector has been replaced by a new social patronage governance system where, in most cases, the workers on new farms are distant relatives of the owner. While GoZ policy provides some level of social protection (minimum wages, severance packages etc.), the extent to which such protection is realised remains low.

Whereas GoZ policy on the payment of severance payments to retrenched farm workers on compulsorily acquired farms was clarified half way through the FTLRP, its actual implementation was found to have been limited by a few factors. Because severance payments are, in law, tied to compensation for land improvements on acquired farms, the lag in such compensation payments so far has delayed the payment of severance packages. Less than 25% of the former farm workers are believed to have received full packages. Although some of the severance packages have been fully paid up in advance of such compensation payments, numerous LSCF farmers, especially among those who are contesting their farm acquisitions, have either not paid severance packages or have paid up only the basic installment. A few who are contesting their land acquisition have, however, paid full severance packages. Even some farm workers who retained their employment were found to have been demanding retrenchment packages and, in some cases, they were paid severance packages and re-employed as casual workers.

The changing agrarian structure has been accompanied by a shift in agrarian labour processes in the former LSCF sector, encompassing the demand for and utilization of farm labour, recruitment of farm labour and wages amongst others. These emerging agrarian labour patterns are discussed next.

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In some areas there is a trend towards under-utilising the skilled and unskilled labour of former farm workers because of the fact that local rural labour markets are changing dramatically. Gold panning has created a more lucrative alternative source of income for some former farm workers in about a dozen districts with alluvial gold, especially in the Mashonaland and Midlands provinces. Wages from gold panning work are much higher than farm labour rates and have created labour scarcities for both new A2 and remaining LSCF farmers. The emergence of short term, farm labour specialist consultancy services also limits employer access and control of skilled farm labour. Added to this is the fact that, in A2 areas, some new farmers distrust former farm workers due to their perceived loyalties to former LSCF owners, while farm workers also perceive new farmers as poor employers. This has generated resistance by both parties to engage former farm workers, leading to labour shortages and local conflict between new farmers and former farm workers still residing on farm compounds in A2 areas.

In general there are some areas in which former farm workers are being perceived as a nuisance, given that it is alleged that they are involved in theft, stock rustling and other socially ‘undesirable’ activities (excessive drinking, prostitution and so on). Such allegations add perspective to the negative local attitudes towards former farm workers who are branded as ‘foreigners’. Thus they are considered not capable of being integrated into local cultural and governance systems.

New land uses in A1 resettlement areas, especially those focused on maize grown in small-cropped areas have tended to rely on family labour and labour imported from the communal area, “new farm workers”, rather than former farm workers from compulsorily acquired farms. The “new farm workers” are usually distant relatives of the A2 farmers from the extended family. For instance in districts such as Chikomba, where agricultural production in new resettlement areas (both A1 and A2) is focused towards maize, new farmers brought their own labour mostly imported from the communal area.

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4.1.3 MarketsAgricultural price policy is at the centre of current economic policy contradictions. The recent re-introduction of price and marketing controls on key agricultural commodities and inputs on grounds of protecting consumers and farmers has had mixed effects. Farmers have argued that commodity prices are too low while input prices have largely been allowed to escalate. Agricultural input manufacturers argue that government has unfairly targeted manufacturers forcing them to lower prices in the face of ever rising input and raw material costs. Government on the other hand has been arguing that industrialists have been using their oligopoly power to profiteer. Political polarisation led government to believe that some industrialists were raising prices to boost support for the opposition’s alleged strategy of creating a “crisis”, for election benefit.

Focusing debate on just the consumer-manufacturer interface neglects the multifaceted dimensions of price policy. Government policy on prices consists of a range of instruments affecting various components of the whole commodity chain. At the macro-level, exchange rate and interest rates policy, energy policy, fuel pricing policy, labour and wage policies, among others, have a bearing on the costs of farm input manufacturing, farm production costs, agricultural produce processing and distribution costs. The current fixed exchange rate should in theory make imported raw materials relatively cheap. However, shortages in the official foreign currency markets prevents realisation of such benefits. Likewise cheap fuel and electricity prices should lower production costs for farmers and manufacturers. However, import duties on raw materials, machinery and spares, as well as high legal minimum wages increase the costs of inputs and farm production, increasing pressure for commodity price increases. The challenge facing government is to balance these various policy measures, including the exchange rate, pricing and marketing policies, inflation and interest rates and others as discussed below.

Agricultural pricing policy concerns typically combine concerns about the taxation of farmers, production incentives, affordability of agricultural commodities to consumers, the welfare of different classes of citizens, and

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political stability. Zimbabwe’s agricultural price fixing system is based on Pan Territorial Pricing (PTP) and Pan Seasonal Pricing (PSP). The uniform pricing policy entails that every marketing depot price of maize is the same. Implicitly the PTP structure subsidises transport costs to farmers in the outlying areas and taxes farmers closer to the major marketing centres.

Agricultural prices in Zimbabwe fell by about 8% in real terms in the decade leading up to the fast-track land redistribution programme. This effect has been exacerbated by other economic wide policies, whose impact has been through the exchange rate and the price of non-agricultural activities. Trade and investment policies over the past 10 years have tended to have a negative impact on agriculture, drawing resources away from the sector particularly from the small-scale sector. Indirect effects of macroeconomic and industrial policies were no less important to agriculture than the direct sector specific agricultural policies. Two key relationships are central in this analysis: the relative price of agricultural to non-agricultural commodities, and the price of tradable to non-tradable (or “home”) goods. Shifting the related policies, in consideration of the issues discussed below, is critical to any agricultural recovery, food security and poverty reduction.

Direct price and marketing controls do not exist for all produce except maize and wheat. On 16 July 2001 government reversed grain market liberalisation policy making the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) the sole legal buyer of maize and wheat outside production zones. Under statutory instrument 235A of 2001, maize and maize products and wheat and wheat products were declared to be controlled products within Zimbabwe in terms of the Grain Marketing Act. This effectively made it illegal to buy, sell or move maize or wheat (and their respective products) within Zimbabwe other than to and from the GMB. The move saw the suspension of Zimbabwe Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ZIMACE) trade in maize and wheat and subjected both crops to fixed pan-seasonal and pan-territorial prices. GMB also maintains a monopoly over the imports and exports of maize and wheat, processors require permits from the government to export or import these two products for human consumption supplies. Since 2002 it has allowed limited imports of yellow maize, low-grade

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wheat and milling by-products by stockfeed manufacturers. These restrictions were further tightened with the gazetting of Statutory Instrument 387. Grain farmers are now compelled to deliver maize and grain stocks no later than 14 days after harvest. These restrictions reduced the incentives to produce most grains viably in general.

4.1.4 ProfitabilityTo assess the overall impacts of macroeconomic and sectoral policies on large and small-scale farmers we used a methodology termed the policy analysis matrix (PAM). The PAM approach basically involves two evaluations: profitability of a production process under current pricing structures and profitability under prices that would prevail under free-market pricing conditions. Through comparisons of the two analyses this enables one to gauge the impact of current policies on costs of production, on revenues and on profits. Our assessment of the pricing trends and their relative effects on large and small farmers demonstrates widely differentiated production incentives as shown below.

Effects of marketing regulations on commercial producer incentivesEffects on tradable input costs Basing on a free market foreign currency rate of Z$4,100 to the US dollar all major crops grown in the commercial farming sector indicate negative differences between costs of tradable inputs (e.g. fertiliser, seed, fuel, power, machinery components) valued at current prices and the same costs valued at international prices. This result indicates that the farmers are paying less than what they would be paying had these been charged at international prices. Therefore present policies are implicitly subsidising farmers or the government through input market policies is transmitting positive incentives in the production of these commodities through lower tradeable input costs. However, the experiences of the past two season have been that of shortages of fertilisers and seeds at the controlled prices which have spawned a thriving black market where prices have been many times higher than ruling official market ones. Thus these subsidies have been decimated through the activities on the black market.

Effects on domestic costs

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Domestic factors of production include labour, finance, water, and land, among others. Our analysis indicates nominal prices paid by commercial producers of maize, groundnuts, and sorghum were lower than would prevail if competitive markets were allowed to set prices effectively giving producers of products producer incentives. However, the opposite is true for cotton, beans, sugarcane, sunflower, paprika, sunflower and tobacco. Government policies in this case are implicitly taxing the farmers for using the domestic factors of production in the production of these tradable products. Farmers are effectively paying more than what they are supposed to be paying for domestic resources in terms of the opportunity cost. This acts as disincentive to producers of the affected crops.

Overall effects on profitabilityThe overall effects on producer incentives after taking into account output price effects have been negative. Despite official foreign currency rates being pegged at Z$824 to the US$ shortages of foreign currency in the official markets has meant that most participants in the agricultural industry have been sourcing foreign currency on the parallel markets on which the Zimbabwe dollar has been steadily falling. Assuming a free-market exchange rate of Z$4,100:US$16, the current profit levels are less than those under free-market conditions for all the products grown in the commercial farming sectors indicating that the current policies are implicitly taxing the farmers hence the tendency for the reduced production of most agricultural commodities by different categories of commercial farmers witnessed in production trends.

Effects of marketing regulations on smallholder producer incentivesEffects on Tradable costsFor the smallholder-producing sector, the effects of government policies closely mirror those for the commercial producers with regard to tradeable inputs. Again the assessments show for all major crops that farmers are paying less than they would if resources are charged at market determined exchanges rates, implying net subsidisation. The exception in this case is tobacco which shows farmers are effectively taxed by current policies.

Effects on domestic factor costs6 Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe foreign currency auction rate, 12 January 2004

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For cotton, cowpea, tobacco, bambara nuts (nyimo) our assessment suggests that smallholder farmers are paying less for the domestic factors of production (land, labour, and financial resources) than they would if these are valued at their opportunity costs. Thus government policy has the effect of providing farmers with a subsidy to apply more of the domestic resources or alternatively policies are taxing the providers of domestic resources in production of these crops by smallholders. However, in all the other major smallholder crops policies have effectively taxed farmers in the use of domestic resources.

Net effect on profitabilityAs is the case with commercial producers, after taking into account output price effects, profits realised by smallholder farmers are lower than would prevail if free-market prices ruled. This contradicts the GoZ policy thrust in agriculture and social sphere which is intended to promote poverty reduction and food security among the poor and agricultural producers.

The analysis above takes current prices as the official controlled prices. Evidence however shows that smallholder producers have been sourcing very little of their inputs needs especially fertilizer at controlled prices due to shortages in the official input outlets. The bulk of their needs have been sourced from informal traders at prices as high as twice the official prices. Thus actual current profits for typical smallholders are much lower than those based on official prices. Again this limits smallholder production and food security, and minimizes the potential income and social support that could be realised through agriculture.

4.2 Agricultural Services: Extension, Infrastructure and MachineryExtension is important in increasing productivity as far as it transfers technology to farmers. Budget cuts to agriculture in recent years have seen extension coverage dwindling to sub-optimal levels. Diversion of extension workers to land reform7 and disaster management processes further worsened 7 Land identification: Between July 2000 and October 2002 AREX staff visited and compiled feasibility reports on 8166 farms identified for gazetting. Assessment of Applications: AREX staff helped in the assessment of production plans submitted by the 100,000 A2 applicants. Planning and Demarcation: Between July 2000 and October 2002 AREX staff planned and demarcated 90 % of the 5808 farms processed during the period. Irrigation rehabilitation needs assessment: Together with Department of Agriculture Engineering and ARDA, AREX visited all farms and compiled reports on what infrastructure was needed to resuscitate irrigation operations.

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access to extension services. Though NGOs, agro-processors and tertiary institutes (e.g. the Soyabean Task Force) have come in to provide some extension, this has been inadequate and sometimes narrowly focussed on specific crops. Poor coordination between research and extension has also reduced the speed of transfer of new technology to farmers, though the reformed government services amalgamating Department of Research and Specialist Services (DR&SS) with Department of Agricultural Extension (AGRITEX) to form Department of Agricultural Research and Extension (AREX) are still to be tested.

Despite government assurances that they intend to improve extension coverage, observations on the ground shows very thin coverage. For example, field evidence from Mashonaland West shows that there is a total of 270 000 farming households and 35822 new farmers being supported by an AREX establishment of 736 agricultural extension workers with a potential of one extension worker to farmer ratio of 1:366. However the actual ratio is 1:662 due to high vacancy levels. In Makonde public institutions extension and service coverage has increased to 1:174 in terms of establishment but that of staff in post increased to 1:213. In Manicaland, the provincial extension worker vacancy levels stood at 40% in 2003 compared to 14% in 2000. By May 2003, AREX had an estimated 3487 vacant posts nationwide (AREX, 2003).

A survey by (Chasi, 2003) revealed that 50 % of farmers interviewed felt that farmer-extension worker linkages were weak and that farmers do not request for assistance. In addition, uncertainties brought about by the amalgamation of research and extension resulted in high senior staff turnover particularly in the extension arm where in 1999, 90% of the Chief Agricultural Extension officers had between 10-15 years experience in the post. In contrast the average experience level in 2002 had been reduced to 1 year in post. Vacancies of agricultural specialists were 50% in the majority of branches. Thus 6000 new extension workers the government hopes to hire will not have the benefit of experienced senior staff to train and orient them in a transformed agricultural production sector.

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Faced with a depleted work force provincial extension leadership has tended to shift personnel from communal areas or to expand their geographic areas of coverage to the newly resettled areas adversely affecting coverage in the communal areas. This has been exacerbated by lack of vehicles, diesel and the collapse of the old communication radios (AREX, 2003).

InfrastructureOn-farm productive infrastructure includes facilities for input and output storage, grading sheds, tobacco barns and irrigation. In general, productive infrastructure is unevenly distributed among A2 farm subdivisions, with generally less than 20% of the subdivisions having a full complement of such infrastructure. This means that the new farmers have variable opportunities to optimise their land use and production processes based upon their access to infrastructure, and that their productive and hence income potentials vary accordingly. Control and or access to the infrastructure are not necessarily matched by the capacities of farmers to utilise them. Some who have low productive capacities control or have access, while others among them have no or little access to existing infrastructure. There is quite some mismatch between access and utilisation of infrastructures

In some localities or farms, various arrangements to share the utilisation and maintenance of existing infrastructure obtain and are contributing towards the full utilisation of their capacities, as well as to optimal land use. In some cases, plot holders who are custodians of infrastructure refuse to share its use while they are not fully utilising the infrastructure. In other cases infrastructure is not being utilised because it has become dysfunctional for various reasons, while there are many cases where new farmers have repaired and improved the infrastructure and are fully utilising it. The existing utilisation of infrastructure varies according to farmer‘s capacities, investment on improvements and the adoption of shared access and utilisation arrangements.

The choice of enterprise mixes that match existing infrastructure by farmers also contributes towards higher infrastructure capacity utilisation. However, there is evidence of infrastructure not being utilised because farmers are following enterprises that do not match the existing infrastructure capacities.

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There are also many cases where new farmers have not been able to produce certain commodities (e.g. tobacco, wheat etc.) because they do not have access to relevant and existing infrastructure (tobacco barns, irrigation etc,) for various reasons, including the refusal to share or sublet under-utilised infrastructure by some custodians.

Most of these problems with infrastructure management and access stem partly from the policy cloud that exists over who owns the farm infrastructure (the state or the new farmer), whether it is meant to be free or not, and whether GoZ policy is encouraging shared infrastructure utilisation or it intends to encourage only some individuals to control the infrastructures while limiting its own responsibilities over this multiplicity of scattered assets.

Given that the uneven capacities or commitment to invest among A2 beneficiaries does not match the patterns of infrastructure allocations, there is concern that GoZ infrastructure allocation and use policy should explicitly lean towards allocative and access measures that ensure their full utilisation.

MachineryMany of the beneficiaries in both A1 and A2 schemes are new farmers who did not have their own stocks of farm equipment. The displaced LSCF farmers either sold their equipment, had their equipment stolen during land occupations, exported equipment, or have warehoused their equipment in anticipation of favourable settlement of their acquisition court contests. In addition, the current macro-economic conditions – high inflation, high interest rates and lack of foreign currency – have made it difficult for new farmers to acquire machinery. The government has through the DDF tried to alleviate these constraints but the general assessment has been that of shortage of equipment and services. In this section we assess the current demands, and resource requirements for the reformed sector to recover from the current slump.

Estimates of how much tractor and equipment still remain in the wake of changes brought about by the Fast-track Programme are difficult to ascertain. In 2000, the World Resources Institutes estimated a tractor stock of 24,000

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running tractors in the country. Given the District Development Fund (DDF) has about 789 tractors, this leaves about 23,000 tractors(97%) in the commercial farming sector prior to the acquisition process. Alternative figures based on needs assessments done by the DDF tend to suggest there are 13,000 tractors operational in the country after the implementation of the land reform (Herald, 19 December 2003). This suggests that 11,000 tractors are either in storage, have been exported or are on sale in second hand outlets dotted around the country. "Many of our members, who have been evicted from their farms in the past three years, have been storing their equipment in the hope that they will be able to return to the land in the future" the CFU admits. The Sunday Mirror, 4 January 2004, reports that about a hundred Zimbabwean farmers, some with their imported equipment, have settled in Zambia. Displaced commercial farmers claim that $23 billion worth of equipment was either looted, seized or vandalised before and after the expiry of Section 8 notices of the Land Acquisition Act.

Addition to tractor stock through new importations during the FTLRP period have been low. The decline in sales started way back before the Fast Track Reforms. Most suppliers of farm machinery have reported precipitous decline in sale of agricultural machinery especially tractors over the past seven years after experiencing a huge and steady boom from 1991 to 1996. However, the decline has been deepest in the past three years due in part to the land reform program which removed from the land white commercial farmers who were the most regular buyers. The general economic decline and devaluation of the Zimbabwe-dollar over the same period is also to blame as it rendered imported machinery unaffordable for most farmers. In no other sector was the decline most dramatic as in the sale of new tractors over the same period. In 2001/02, only 47 new tractors were sold in the country down from a peak of 1900 new tractors in 1996 (Mano et. al., 2003).

The market supply of agricultural equipment and farm machinery has been severely affected by the current shortage of foreign currency and general economic down turn at a time when potential demand for farm equipment among resettled new farmers is at its peak.

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Almost all peasant farmers in communal areas and A1 resettlement areas continue to rely on cattle draft power for agriculture. But ownership of adequate cattle for draft-power is limited with about 40 % of the peasant farmer population having none. There is evidence that the majority of the rural population prefer tractor tillage services to cattle tillage for its superior quality of ploughing. Supply of tractor tillage services from DDF continues to address this constraint.

However, DDF has little capacity to satisfy demand. Nationally, of the 789 tractors owned by the District Development Fund (DDF) 53% or 420 tractors are normally in working condition (see Table 4.1). The tillage capacity is further strained by the shortage of ploughs, disc harrows and planters. Prior to the 2002-03 season DDF had only 275 ploughs. Given that in some provinces there are more ploughs than are functional tractors while in others there are more ploughs than there are tractors, the effective ploughing capacity (i.e. tractor-plough combinations) available prior to the 2002/3 season was only 269 nationwide.According to DDF officials, the institution faces a potential national demand for tillage of 2 million hectares from communal farming areas plus the 3 million hectares in the newly resettled areas created by the Fast-track land resettlement scheme. Under current operating procedures DDF has been providing services at a rate of just over 3 hectares per tractor per day limiting its output over a three-month (i.e. October, November and December) period to below 80,000 hectares country wide, a tiny proportion of demand countrywide. The Table 4.2 below summarizes the tillage supply from DDF over the 2002-03-summer period.

Table 4.1: Stock of DDF Tillage Units: 2002-03PROVINCE Tractors Equipment

Working Not Working

% Working Ploughs

Disc Harrows

Planters

Mashonaland East 35 62 36 41 12 13Mashonaland West 48 44 52 35 9 8Mashonaland Central

63 36 64 29 8 8

Manicaland 58 35 52 25 10 10Masvingo 49 48 51 40 8 32Midlands 67 26 72 38 11 15Matebeleland North

57 48 54 33 14 8

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Matebeleland South 43 43 50 34 7 25Total 420 369 53 275 79 119Source: Unpublished DDF reports

Table 4.2: Coverage of the 2002/03 DDF Tillage ServicesProvince # of families Area ploughed (ha)Mash Central 4,419 11,043Mash West 1,922 10,781Manicaland 3,419 8,037Mash East 3,838 14,849Masvingo 2,841 10,582Midlands 3,953 9,897Mat South 7,031 6,957Mat North 3,067 5,897Harare Peri-Urban 131 1,704TOTALS 30,621 79,747Source: Unpublished DDF Reports

The net result has been under supply of tillage services especially in Communal and A1 type resettlement schemes. An assessment by FOSENET, an NGO emergency monitoring alliance in July 2003 shows widespread lack of access to tillage services throughout the country (see Table 4.3 below). Households lacking draught power/tillage services ranged from 21% in Mashonaland Central to as high as 60% in Manicaland Province.

Table 4.3: Households With Access to Tillage/draught Power Province Average % households with access to

tillage/draught powerManicaland 39Mashonaland East 67Mashonaland Central 79Mashonaland West n.aMidlands 68Masvingo n.aMatebeleland North 65Matebeleland South 54 Source: FOSENET, 2003

The above assessment indicates that the available fleet is grossly insufficient to meet the expressed demand for DDF tillage services across the country. DDF projects that the nation needs a fleet of almost 40,000 tractors to provide timely traction service during the summer ploughing season. Given the estimated 13,000 operating in the farms and probably 11,000 tractors in the storage and second hand sales floor, this implies a residual 17,000 tractors that would need to be imported. As an immediate measure farmers and tractor lease companies could be facilitated to acquire the tractors currently available in the country. At

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an estimated cost of the equivalent of US$6,000 per tractor-plough unit, this would cost about US$66 million or Z$297 billion at current prices way beyond the means of government.

5.0 SOCIAL IMPACTS OF FTLRP

5.1 Food SecurityFood security is one of the primary goals of enhancing agricultural productivity and is also at the heart of sustainable development. The first Millennium Development Goal is to halve the proportion of people living on less than US$1 a day and those who suffer from hunger before 2015. In Zimbabwe, food security has been at the centre of all development goals and strategies since independence in 1980, although the GoZ policies from the mid-1990s have steadily worked against food security. Although Zimbabwe has the potential to be food secure at both national and household levels, the country is currently facing severe food shortages, due to a combination of factors, including policy deficiencies (agricultural pricing and marketing), drought and land transfers. The food relief activities in the 2002/2003 consumption season covered about 7 million people throughout the rural areas, representing over 49% of the entire population. It is well known that the real causes of hunger are poverty, inequality and lack of access to resources for many people who cannot buy the food that is available or lack the land and resources to grow food themselves, as well as deficient food policies.

The situation in Zimbabwe has become more complex, because even those with entitlements have been failing to access food on the markets, while food production declined substantially during the FTLRP period for various reasons. Thus the main cereal (maize, wheat and sorghum) and the key nutrition giving commodities (milk, groundnuts, beef and soyabeans), as well as oil seed derivatives have been in short supply, for the various reasons (land reform, drought, agricultural policy). This expanded food insecurity beyond the normal effects of drought, and broadened the band of the food insecure. The access effects were mostly in marginal and remote areas, and among the urban poor and socially vulnerable (women and children, HIV/AIDS affected, farm workers etc). Added to this is the fact that the Strategic Grain Reserve held by the GMB

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was depleted from the mid-1990s, thereby limiting the opportunities to enhance food security and to support the poor during drought. The result has been the expensive reallocation of scarce foreign currency to food imports.

Prospects for 2002/2003 agriculture season were poor. The season has been characterised by erratic rainfall and many farmers failed to access enough inputs for their requirements, because of shortages arising from supply disincentives, foreign currency constraints and the reduction of seed producers. Different institutions in the country have come up with some probable figures of production for the 2003 harvest. The crop of main concern is maize. FEWSNet’s March 2003 report indicate that the country would produce 1,289 million MT of maize, while the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) are predicting a maize harvest of 600,000 to 700,000 MT (Zimbabwe Independent, 27 March 2003). The First Crop Forecast puts the maize harvest at 1,258,550 MT. A report prepared for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in January 2003, predicted a maize harvest of between 880,000 MT and 1.2 million MT. The CFU prediction is too low considering that the rainfall situation improved at the end of the season, thus improving yields for the late planted crop. Also given, that 60-70% of maize is produced by the smallholder sector, the FEWSNet and Crop Forecast Committee predictions are more likely. The analysis that follow will use maize harvest of 1,2 million MT, although the UNDP data suggests that 800,000 MT could be closer to reality.

It is not yet clear which population figure is best to determine the 2003/2004 balance sheet. Thus three scenarios were considered in our analysis. From the method, the September 2003 population is 11,645,328 using the base year population of 11,634,663 from the August 2002 census.

A maize harvest of 1,2 million MT leaves a deficit whichever population figures are used. Thus, Zimbabwe is expected to continue facing food shortages in the 2003/04 period given that maize contribute over 70% of the cereal requirements. But it seems more prudent to use both the higher population figure of 13 million people and the lower production of one million metric tonnes

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to gauge the maximum scope of the food requirement. This would put the maize requirement at between 800,000 MT and 1 million MT.

Although it is expected that food relief activities will decrease, it is important to carefully review the areas that would be dropped from the list of food relief. It is important to analyse the anticipated food shortfall at a disaggregated level from different areas in the country. The communal sector normally keeps production for their own use and it is the production from the commercial sector that goes to the urban areas.

5.2 Vulnerable Groups

Farm WorkersWhile official GoZ statistics, and media and NGO comments suggest that below 2% of the land reform beneficiaries were former farm workers, field evidence suggests that their level of access to land is about 5% of the beneficiaries. But, in some areas, former farm workers have been completely marginalised from land access.

The FTLRP has had numerous effects on the residential status of former farm workers, who had resided on their employer’s property for the greater part of their employment life. Some former farm workers have been forced to move off the farms to make way for new settlers, under either the A1 or A2 models, while some are still resident on farms acquired under FTLRP, either as squatters or in agreement with the new owners. Those displaced in this manner are often stranded on the outskirts of the farms or they trek to the fast growing ‘informal settlements’ where social conditions are desperate, especially in areas where there were higher proportions of former farm workers perceived to be truly “foreign” migrant workers. Others with ties in the communal area have relocated there (see Sachikonye and Zishiri, 1999; Zishiri , 1999; Magaramombe, Waterloos and Muti, 1998). The evidence of new informal settlements comprising former farm workers is either scattered or empirically elusive. A few former farm workers displaced by the resettlement programme have been re-employed in remaining LSCFs and now reside on these properties. Because most farm workers (about 75%) are originally from communal areas

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within the districts and surrounding districts most of those who did not secure employment or allocated land relocated to their communal areas. Further studies of potential farm worker displacement, including their magnitude and time scale, possible destinations and the capacity of destination to hold an increase in population, are required (Zimbizi, 2000).

Our case study evidence is backed by studies (FCTZ, 2002; Sachikonye, 2003; Save the Children Fund and FCTZ, 2002; Magaramobe, 2003) which indicate that many former farm workers have remained residing in the large-scale commercial farming areas, and migrate temporarily within those confines. Farm workers interviewed indicated that their proposed destination was to remain in the large-scale commercial farming area. This was as high as 84% of the affected workers in Manicaland compared to only 11.5% relocating to the communal area (FCTZ, 2002). Few informal settlements have sprouted since the onset of the FTLRP, such as the Chihwiti and Gambuli informal settlements in Chinhoyi, where an estimated 51% of the households were former farm workers in the district (Save the Children Fund and FCTZ, 2002).

There has been a tendency, in public policy debate on former farm workers and among interest groups, to overstate the extent to which former farm workers are “foreign” in law. Indeed the few former farm workers who chose to be repatriated have done so on their own, reflecting the tendency of most to claim Zimbabwean citizenship. Thus, destitution and homelessness among former farm workers as result of the FTLRP does not seem to be widespread. But the approximately 3% of former farm workers who, in various surveys, said that they preferred to be repatriated do not seem to have been, perhaps because they received little external support for this, including from the GoZ.

However, it is important to note that a proportion of former farm workers already had access to land in the communal areas, though there are concerns about its capability to sustain their livelihoods. At least 25% of the former farm workers have relocated to the communal areas. What this suggests is that a number of former farm workers remain without land rights and/or live with insecure land tenurial arrangements wherever they are, as employees or relocatees. Also, there exists an overlap between access to land in the

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communal areas and in the new resettlement areas, since some of those former farm workers who initially relocated registered for land through their traditional chiefs and got it.Access to social services among the former farm workers has further deteriorated as a result of the FTLRP, especially among those who have been displaced. A gap has been created since the resource endowed former white farmers contributed substantially to the provision of social services for their workers, and the RDCs have been incapacitated by the absence of taxes from the LSCF sector, since new farmers are not yet paying these taxes.

For instance schooling rates have always been lowest in the farm worker community, even before the FTLRP. In 1997, only 59% of the children of farm workers attended primary school compared to 79% and 89% in the communal and urban areas respectively (Sachikonye and Zishiri, 1999). Schooling rates have worsened since the FTLRP as there is an estimated primary school dropout rate ranging from 15% to 55% in Manicaland (Sachikonye, 2003). The major reason for dropping out of school is the inability to pay school fees after the breadwinners lost their jobs. Furthermore, schools are sometimes located very far away from their new residential places. Health services and other community support systems that former employers provided have also tended to be disrupted by the FTLRP. In 2002 the level of basic primary health care had decreased among farm worker households, e.g. 42% of the mothers knew how to prepare sugar and salt solution used to treat diarrhoea, a decline from rates of above 60% in the late 1980s (FTCZ, 2002).

The provision of social services to farm workers remains part of an ongoing effort by the GoZ and NGOs. However, the coverage and effectiveness of such services remains weak. Indeed, former farm workers are amongst the poorest, the most vulnerable to the effects of HIV/AIDS, the least food secure and the least educated and healthy. Investments into this are just too low to have critical impacts.

It appears that there is much greater scope than is realised for the involvement of NGOs, in collaboration with RDCs and various central government ministries, in the effort to address the overall needs of the farm worker population,

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including former farm workers. A particular need is for an integrated and coordinated framework for the provision of social, residential and administrative services to farm workers and A1 settlers, as well as to non-farm entrepreneurs, artisans and workers who provide commercial micro-industrial services to resettlement areas. Newly resettled areas lack developed rural service centres and the associated social, business, transportation and communication infrastructure necessary for the more effective provision of social services to these communities. Government and NGO budgets and personnel are severely limited in relation to the demand for such services.

Thus, it will require concerted government, private sector and NGO collaboration to address former farm workers’ problems, as well as those of retained farm workers. The key is to enhance their integration into local communities in general and into the new resettlement societies in particular. Greater efforts are required to mobilise resources towards implementing the recommended actions.

Gender and Land Gender imbalances are poorly addressed in land reform processes in most African countries, despite the role women play in subsistence agriculture. In Zimbabwe, women are discriminated against with regard to land allocation and the reasons for this are cumulative and multi-dimensional such as the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial combinations of custom, culture, by-laws and not putting gender discrimination associated with land. The percentage of women land beneficiaries ranges from 5% to 20% depending on province and scheme. For example, in Goromonzi official data recorded only 19% women beneficiaries from A1.

A critical aspect of the lack of adequate re-absorption of former farm workers in terms of job re-engagement, access to land and residency, and social services is the gender dimension. Currently existing local power relations, social practices and even policy tend to discriminate against women farm workers. The women farm workers were the most vulnerable to exclusion. Women farm workers were at any rate the most vulnerable group before the FTLRP and, since they were the majority doing casual work (constituted 55% of the casual labourers in

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2000), they performed arduous piecework and were least the represented among skilled workers. Thus they are among the majority who lost fulltime and part-time work in the highlands and their casualisation in new farm employment is being further entrenched. Their capacity to advocate for better labour rates is also weak. In addition, they are the least represented in the provision of resettlement land. Without special efforts to address this structural problem, women former farm workers and their children will continue to suffer the most.

This suggests that women were not prioritised for land allocation as individuals per se, given that the predominant criteria used was to allocate to households on the assumption that most of the women in need of land are married or seek land in a family context. Thus most land in Zimbabwe is definitely under male ownership and control and there has been little systematic focus on the question of women’s access to and control over land despite the potential importance of land to the improvement of women’s status and gender equity. This trend has important implications for the security and investments made by women, as key land users and fenders of the family.

HIV/AidsHIV/AIDS has both short term and long term impacts on agricultural productivity, rural development, food security, poverty and livelihoods in general. Most impacts are negative retarding development and progressively lowering the country’s development indices. The HIV-Aids affected persons amount to almost 2 million people the majority of which reside in the rural areas and 30% of whom are pregnant women. These people are the most affected, because of the reduction of their wage incomes by an average of 31%, their tendency to reduce the areas planted to crops and their tendency to frequently migrate at least temporarily (Zimvac, 2003).

HIV/AIDS affects agricultural production through decreased productivity and land use by infected and affected individuals. The labour of the able-bodied that would be invested in the field is often diverted to caring for the infected and attending funerals of those who have passed on. Related deaths reduce the

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agricultural labour force. It is likely that when labour is reduced affected households might move towards cultivation of smaller areas, and lesser demanding crops such as tubers, which have less nutritional value than cereals. There is also loss of indigenous methods, intergenerational knowledge, specialized skill, practices of farming because HIV/AIDS deaths. AIDS also exacerbates the existing gender based land imbalances since widows are often dispossessed of their family land once their spouses die. The management of the disease also affects household direct purchasing power as they seek funds for medicines, transport to treatment centres. Increased orphanage and deaths of breadwinners increases the dependency ratio, thus reducing the savings available to invest in farming, this result in less money for purchase of food supplies thus compromising nutritional status of the communities. In the present food crisis, those affected by HIV/AIDS have been obviously found to be more vulnerable as their ability to withstand hunger has been severely compromised by their low health circumstances.

6.0. NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

6.1 Natural resources utilisation policy and programmeAlthough the GoZ produced a policy document on land reform and wildlife management, which was designed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) midway through the FTLRP, the policy is not to guide sustainable natural resource utilisation in the resettled areas. The policy does provide the integrated and multifaceted strategy required for sustainable resource utilisation. The objectives of the policy are not related to targeted natural resource based production or does it define the land areas to be devoted to natural resources utilisation vis-à-vis agriculture.

There is evidence that effective and optimal utilisation of all natural resources is not being achieved. The full potential of natural resource utilisation is not being sought comprehensively from those natural resources that are being currently exploited. Various natural resource potentials in resettlement areas are not yet being exploited. The potentials that can arise from processing some natural resources are not being realized. Some natural resources in newly acquired land

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are being over-exploited as is the case with wildlife poaching and tree cutting for commercial wood fuel.

There is no differentiation of natural resources utilisation policy to target A1 and A2 farmers varied needs. The A1 type farmers require broadly based benefits that natural resources can offer at the local level for the poor. The A2 type farmers could well engage in conventional existing natural resources enterprises such as forestry, wildlife based tourism and fishing, crocodile farming. This potential is not being realized. Policy incentives for this do not exist.

Although the forestry commission has a programme that tries to promote value addition in forest products utilisation its coverage is limited. The range of natural resources which are yet to be exploited include various inorganic resources, various organic plants whose value unfolds from value adding extraction and processing; animate resources such as large and small wildlife and fish, as well as inanimate resources which lie idle. The GoZ policy on natural resources utilisation does not specify how it could increase the number of indigenous participants in natural resources enterprise nor target groups specified. The policy does not address increasing the productivity of wildlife, forests and woodlands resources off-take, nor measures to ensure increase bio-diversity or the protection of endangered species, in resettled areas.

6.2 Special endangered species project The FTLRP has severely undermined any projects that were in place to protect special endangered species. With the permission that was given to farm occupiers by the Rural Land Occupiers Act, several species of protected species were put at risk. However, the farmers moved most of these, particularly the animals, to their friends’ properties for safekeeping. Thus, there has not been enough effort made to address the special needs of protecting and augmenting specific endangered species such as rhinos, wild dogs and plants and their habitats. Furthermore, protected species have not been planned for in terms of appropriate land sizes.

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6.3 Tobacco curing woodlots for A1 and A2 areasChanges in the tobacco grower base have resulted in a major shift in the source of energy for tobacco curing from coal to wood. According to statistics from the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, one hectare of a 5 year old Eucalyptus woodlot produces 31 cubic metres of wood while 4 cubic metres is required to cure 1000 kg of tobacco. Based on these figures, the country’s annual tobacco crop of about 200 million kilogrammes will require 800 000 cubic metres of wood from an area of about 35 000 ha. This should exceed 36 000 hectares per year if the other wood needs of the tobacco growers such as barn and fence construction are accounted for.

If the entire wood requirement for curing were to come from indigenous forests then tobacco production by the new farmers and other smallholder farmers in the country would not be sustainable. Consequently the expansion of tobacco production under FTLRP may threaten indigenous forests resulting in environmental degradation as the majority of the new farmers, especially those under the A1 model will continue to rely on wood energy to cure tobacco for the foreseeable future. Informal interviews held with farmers in the resettlement areas, revealed that the farmers experienced problems accessing coal and as a result they resorted to using wood to cure the tobacco. Therefore, coal, that is, a better heat source than the Eucalyptus which is also not readily available to the new farmers.

Thus plans have been mooted in the environmental NGO sector to assist new farmers to establish woodlot plantations, especially in the A1 sector. However the Forestry Commission has not yet adequately promoted the development of small woodlot plantations among new A1 and A2 farmers who produce tobacco using wood fuel fired barns. As a result indigenous woodlands are being degraded without replenishment and access to exotic wood fuel for the tobacco curing needs of new farmers is limited.

6.4 Natural resources based land use models and farm sizesIn both the A1 and A2 resettlement models of the FTLRP, it is very clear that forestry and wildlife were not explicitly identified as distinct land use systems.

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There no readily available samples of land use models for the management of natural resources at different scales and to suit different combinations of natural resource utilisation objectives. Current farm sizes allocated and enshrined in the Rural Land (Farm Sizes) Regulations of 2001 in natural resource rich areas are inadequate for their viable exploitation. According to the regulations the maximum farm size in the Eastern Highlands where forests are predominantly located range between 250 ha and 400 ha.

6.5 Gold panning management policyGenerally, people have been practising gold panning, especially during droughts and more so, after the introduction of Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) in 1991 (Mukamuri and Campbell, 1998). The FTLRP has brought with it a general increase in the activities of gold panners around the country. Gold panning is seen to be more lucrative than farming mainly because of the instant income returns compared to agriculture. Most of the gold is sold to unlicensed dealers contravening the Gold Act. In the gold panning areas, serious conflicts and contradictions result between the gold panning and farming activities. Gold panning is also said to be rife in some of the newly resettled farms, particularly in traditional gold panning areas such as Masvingo, Matabeleland South, Midlands, Mashonaland West and Mashonaland Central provinces. The extent of damaged areas ranges between 0 and 15 kilometers. To control gold panning the DNR and police are combining efforts to arrest and penalise illegal gold panners. Gold panning is complicated in that the GoZ legitimates the activity due to foreign currency shortages.

There is no plan to guide gold panning support, improved environmental management promotion, and to monitor the benefits from gold panning and potential export earnings and revenue including the potential to levy local taxes for alluvial pits and erosion management. There is no comprehensive register of gold buyers and panners. It also appears that there is no programme which more formally recognises and supports gold panning activities in a manner which not only regulates the activity but which also provides incentives for the sustainable exploitation of these alluvial resources.

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6.6 Natural resources utilisation extension policy and strategyThe extension services appear not to have a well-coordinated strategy for promoting sustainable natural resources utilisation. Natural resources degradation in new resettlement areas is not being adequately countered by extension services.

6.7 Natural resources planningThe GoZ does not have an inventory of wildlife, woodlands, and endangered species potentials in newly resettled areas. Nor are there plans available to guide public and private resources mobilisation for sustainable commercial and environmental development purposes.

7.0 SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

7.1 Overall RecommendationWe recommend that a comprehensive medium to long-term agrarian reform strategy, which addresses various constraints to the recovery and sustainable development of agriculture, and provides a consistent framework for social protection to formulated. More critically it requires a short-term recovery strategy, which establishes a platform for longer-term actions. The need for strategic planning has been identified (see Utete, 2003), and GoZ efforts in this direction are underway but need further support. Such a strategy should ensure that equitable rights to land and rural development support by the state be sustainanbly maintained. To ensure both sustained agricultural growth and social protection, completing land reform is critical especially with regard to land access and tenure. This should entail meeting the additional land needs of those remaining landless in congested communal areas, those of displaced farm workers and various other vulnerable social groups (women, the HIV/AIDS affected etc), and those of former LSCF farmers willing to pursue farming on appropriately down-sized farms. Agricultural growth, social protection and rural development should be promoted to enhance employment of those farmers displaced by the land transfers and those who will remain un/underemployed in communal, and resettlement areas and even in urban areas.

Furthermore, the strategy should enhance national food security, agro-industrial growth, employment development and rural foreign currency generation in a

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balanced vision of rural development and poverty reduction. Developing this strategy entails the enunciation by government, following consultation with stakeholders, of key elements of the long term vision: agricultural development, rural capital formation, agro-industrial growth, equitable access to agrarian resources, effective operation of rural markets and related public support institutions, adequate rural social protection and the development of effective agrarian institutions.

We recommend that a NLB be established in the medium term, building on the revamped institutional capacities created in the short term. This structure has been recommended in various GoZ land policy commissions and studies (the Rukuni Land Commission of 1994, the Shivji et al land policy review of 1998 and the Utete Report of 2003) and, by various stakeholders. The scope of its functions and its time-framework need to be agreed: namely, whether the agency has a short term life intended to address the finalisation of land acquisition and allocations (including the on-going land auditing and correction work), and other short term land redistribution processes or whether a longer term agency is established to provided the wider and integrated land management functions required. The latter would be aimed at rationalising and strengthening dispersed land institutions, so as to better coordinate regular land policy formulation, monitoring, and implementation, as well as inter-agency and, central and local government relations and responsibilities (for land allocation, registration, acquisition). The independence of the land agency from other developmental functions, such as the agriculture, environment, local government ministries is an issue which must be addressed to avoid intra-governmental conflict of interest and concentration of power, and to correct the limitations that conflicting institutional interest bring to accountability within the GoZ.

We recommend, in line with previous proposals (UNDP Report, 2002; Utete Report, 2003), that a special land reform fund should be created, preferably within the ambit of the new Ministry of Lands, and in the longer run under a proposed National Land Board, in order to maximize GoZ capacities to effectively mobilize and manage finance for the completion of the FTLRP. Such a

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fund should be directed at the short and medium term costs of the land and agrarian reform programme. The main purpose of the fund should be to create an acceptable medium for channeling external donations and to focus the use of available government funds into an efficient and accountable disbursement mechanism. It should also be a mechanism for directing land reform related incomes from fees and charges, and a focal point for ensuring that support to farmers is correctly targeted and accounted for.

Given the current stalled agrarian transition and wide spread agricultural production deficiencies there is a need to redefine and enhance the development strategy and the forms of intervention through a decentralized capacity of the state, in order to ensure effective policy formation and implementation of the agrarian reform component of the strategy. Such a strategy should define the priority needs and focus of the agricultural sector, and clarify the role of the social market vis-à-vis state intervention and planning in the agricultural sector and related markets.

We recommend in line with and in adaptation of the Utete Report (2003) that an agrarian and social recovery strategy with short term (12-18 months) and long term components be designed and implemented immediately. Thus the strategy needs to be implemented in two phases: The first phase of 12-18 months between 2004 and 2005 should be conceived as a short-term recovery action plan, while the medium to long term plan stretches from 2005 to 2010.

Policy Reforms and Improvements We recommend that policy reforms should be speedily conducted, including the design of new policies, refinement of existing policies and improved coordination of the land, agrarian reform and social support policies. This entails work on policies focused on land reform, agricultural policy, including agricultural trade policy aspects and macro-economic policies with special reference to their agricultural inputs and vice-versa, rural agro-industrial policy, social services and employment development policy, social protection and support policies. The objective of the policy refinement component is to remove the constraints to the realization of the desired agricultural outputs, production practices and productivity within the entire agrarian sector, as well as to

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promote a rural development process, which ensures virtuous forward and backward linkages within the economy and provides social protection to the vulnerable. It is a priority that intensive refinement of policy be pursued by the Government of Zimbabwe and includes stakeholders in dialogue. Policies need to be adequately communicated to generate informed public debate and decision-making, and to mobilize stakeholder support in implementation processes. Such public policy dialogue as has been taking place within the NECF, the RBZ consultations around monetary and fiscal policy, and other stakeholder policy dialogues, need to be encouraged and strengthened, while also initiating and expanding public dialogue in specific aspects of land reform, agricultural policy and social services policies. The goal is to improve national economic and social policy coherence stakeholder inputs and public understandings.

Complementary Agricultural Programmatic Support and Implementation This entails the design of three specific programmatic interventions to trigger agricultural production recovery and growth in relationship to and complementing the policy refinements, so as to address the critical inputs needs of, constraints to production capacities of the key agrarian sub-sectors over and above the expected general policy impacts, to speed up responses. Actions include: differentiated support to key sub-sectors of the agrarian populations in communal and resettlement, and commercial farming areas; focused and targeted commodity-wise support for the revival of production; and specific support to agricultural institutions (public and private agencies, associations of farmers and other intermediaries), through specific interventions to support the growth of agro-industrial, marketing and agricultural services.

Programmes to enhance non-farm rural development and social protection To compliment the above agricultural policy and programmatic interventions and to service sustainable rural development, there is need, on the one hand, to introduce a coordinated programme of employment support and economic development. This should be directed towards the development of rural small-scale enterprises (industrial, social, infrastructural, commercial etc); interlinked service centres (for administrative, residential and business purposes); and

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infrastructural development projects (agricultural, non-agricultural and social service infrastructures). On the other hand there is need to expand social services support for those excluded from productive employment in farming or non-farm activities and the socially vulnerable who are unable to fend adequately for themselves (HIV-AIDS affected, the old and infirm, poor women and dislocated farm workers). Such support includes food, health, water and others inputs.

Resource Mobilisation and Sustainable Financing of AgricultureThere is need to comprehensively identify the disaggregated financial requirements of the strategy and to develop new ways of mobilising resources, as well as their effective management for the above strategy. This entails separately costing the short and long term requirements, beginning with the former, of agricultural production and support services, rural development, agro-industrial infrastructural and services provision, social protection, compensation for farm acquisition and land administration. Plans should define the sustainable policy incentives and regulations required to ensure the mobilization of adequate finance from all potential contributors to the agrarian reform. These should include: public sources; (government, parastatals, and local authorities); farmers’ savings and costs recovery contributions; credit, private sector investments and; and trade finance and international resources (from financial institutions and donors). It requires developing effective transparent, targeted and monitorable subsidies for key agricultural actors (farmers, private inputs and services suppliers, NGOs and government agencies) to enhance their financial investments within a sustainable fiscal and monetary policy framework, which eventually phases out some subsidies.

7.2 Land AcquisitionsWith respect to land acquisitions, we recommend the following: the improved identification, gazetting, and final acquisition of the appropriate land; the effective subdivision and allocation of appropriately sized land to deserving and/or “qualified” beneficiaries, including correcting mis-targeted allocations to accommodate excluded groups and to make allocations to former LSCFs workers; the rationalisation of the acquisition and exemption (delisting) process

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towards finalisation of these land rights (such as country to country agreement farmlands and those to be retained by former white farmers) within the policy framework of existing farm size regulations and the “one household one farm” policy; and implementation of the finalised land tenure policy (i.e. leases or other legal land allocation documentation). In the short term this will require establishing appropriate and effective land administration institutions in areas such as, overall policy co-ordination, conflict mediation, local land administration and land tenure administration, and in mobilizing funding for completing the land reform process.

7.3 Land AllocationsWe recommend that in the immediate term (2003/4) period, in which land allocations processes are adjusted and completed, be treated in land policy formation terms (farm sizes, land allocations, land sharing and land access mechanisms) as the baseline period of levelling off the new land distribution structure. Accordingly, during this immediate and medium term period the current farm sizes should be maintained, with the exception of some “special commodity land use” cases, for reasons discussed before. Flexibility in land access (not in the de jure “ownership” of land) within current official farm sizes and the promotion of land sharing and land use partnerships should thus define land policy in the immediate and medium term. In the long term (5 years henceforth) the farm sizes policy and land transfer mechanisms should then be reviewed towards further “right sizing” and to accommodate land transfer (sales/market) mechanisms, which restrict excessive land concentration or land fragmentation for that matter.

During the transition, greater attention should be paid to removing the various land use and production constraints and support systems, which appear to be more critical to meeting targeted outputs than the question of farm sizes in general. At any rate, it is in next 5 years when that we can realistically expect most plot holders to have the “minimum developments”, not the expected timeframes provided for this in the draft lease agreement for A2 and self contained A1 farmers. This is when greater and materially invested activism for freehold title and land markets can be expected from a larger constituency of

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landholders, and then it would be an appropriate time to review land tenure, land markets and farm size policy again.

Given these land allocation problems, land access needs and land use constraints, the GoZ should promote farm planning in general and adjust some of the land allocations to improve access to arable land in relevant cases. There is no need for the upward revision of A2 farm size prescriptions.

7.4 Production PatternsFrom both an ecological and economic point of view, the nation gains more in terms of intensive land utilisation and protection of the environment if land is allocated to its best land-use. Should we keep on encouraging the use of draft animals, which entails keeping extra animals for reproduction purposes in high potential areas? Current allocation of arable land in NR I, II and III is less than half the land reserved for grazing. By the same token, encouraging crop production in excessively dry and stony areas will not generate significant economic benefits but leave behind ecological disasters. To encourage correct land uses we propose that government institute measures such as taxation, regulations and incentives to support optimal land uses.

Land redistribution entails significant reduction in land sizes. The systems of production that evolved under white dominated commercial agriculture were based on land abundance. Transferring such production systems unchanged to the new agrarian structure will not yield maximum benefits. Continuous largely monocultural practices with little rest time for land can lead in the end to yield declines and ecological disasters such as witnessed in the American West during the 1930s. The small sizes demand that instead production strategies include low land using enterprises such as chicken, pig and horticulture with appropriate crop rotation to maintain fertility. In livestock areas greater emphasis should be given to hitherto ignored enterprises such as goat production which have the potential to increase the carrying capacity of natural feed resources. Small ruminants (goats and sheep) need to receive more attention due to their hardiness especially under the conditions in NRs IV and V, low veterinary costs and ability to utilise browse. However, markets for these livestock are poorly formed and extension services do not have well developed

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knowledge packages for commercial production of this class of animal. Government can help promote these livestock through provision of guaranteed market through say the CSC as well as through export markets.

Water resources are essential to stability of yields as well as to intensity of production on farms. In addition, effective use of water resources improves farm viability. To achieve these benefits regulations and incentives must be put in place to make sure most beneficiaries in the reform programme share existing water delivery infrastructure. Incentives such as tax breaks for water saving technologies should be introduced and farmers trained to use water effectively. Viable irrigation financing mechanisms, using revolving funds established and subsidised credit for different purposes, and governed by effective regulations are critical. These measures will together promote enhanced food security and poverty reduction. The GoZ should openly identify integrated and high cost large on-going on irrigation farms that are truly not amenable to being subdivided into small plots. These should be re-planned and sold at full value to those with resources to acquire and use them.

To overcome reservations about individuals owning large concerns in wildlife, dairy and other special land uses, a consortia of beneficiaries should be given shares corresponding to the large A2 plot size allocations and dividends shared according to financial input for infrastructure and related services. In the case of dairy, given the high feed requirements of dairy cows and special technology and milk collection economy requirements we recommend that land provisions be made for dairy production including the following; plot sizes should be increased; existing dairy infrastructure be shared among adjacent farms; and government needs to facilitate provision of such financial assistance if the sector is to recover and prosper. Given the ecological demands of wildlife and the scale and volume sequencing needs of forestry production we recommend that such enterprises be allocated more land than provided for under current government policy guidelines. However, to ensure equity in the distribution of benefits thereof we propose that ownership of these concerns be given to broad consortiums under special management arrangements.

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Seed security is essential for the nation. It is essential therefore that we try to accommodate these needs. We recommend therefore that: all seed producing companies should be allowed to keep farms in which they have their research and factories; and seed producing farms should be allowed to get maximum prescribed farm sizes in portions with adequate water provision.

7.5 Labour ProcessesThe GoZ should mount a special programme to enforce its existing laws on farm workers’ working conditions (wage rates, benefits, leave, severance payments etc.) and to improve awareness of farm workers’ rights and employers’ obligations. To achieve this, new farmers should be trained in labour relations, especially aspects relating to workers’ welfare. Such a programme should be accompanied by activities to retrain former farm workers, upgrade their existing skills, and ensure formal recognition of their skills and appropriate grading of farm workers according to their skill. The GoZ should encourage and regulate the evolution of farm labour recruitment agencies through appropriate incentives and support their work by ensuring that adequate information on the workers’ skills and availability is widely disseminated throughout the country among new farmers. The purpose should be to ensure maximal and protected utilisation of former farm worker skills by new farmers, and to encourage mutual social and economic coexistence and cooperation between farm workers and new farmers. The GoZ should collaborate with the ALB, GAPWUZ and NGOs in this initiative.

Coupled to this new farmers should be encouraged to join farmers organizations through which they can channel their communication for instance during the collective bargaining exercise. This will prevent the current scenario were wage agreements between the ALB and GAPWUZ have been rejected by the GoZ because of the low participation of A2 farmers who now form the bulk of the commercial farmers since the FTLRP.

7.6 Agricultural Services: Extension, Infrastructure and MachineryTechnology development and dissemination should be reorganized and refocused, and agricultural research, extension and technology policy capacities should be boosted. This entails adequate provision of resources for staffing and

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operational resource needs of the expanded sector, especially to avoid the risk of diluting services to Communal farmers. The expanded sector, and the fact that a significant proportion of the just resettled people are first-time farmers, calls for an overhaul of current technology delivery systems. The new technology policy should address the need for short-term crash programmes mobilising latent capacities in private, public, civic, farmer organisation, research and development agencies as well as encouraging farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing. Reduced plot sizes require that extensive production systems be discouraged in favour of more intensive production systems. This requires policy to bias research and extension efforts towards intensive production systems for both crops and livestock.

A clear pronunciation on infrastructure allocation, use and maintenance needs to be made, namely: that infrastructures are not meant to be free; the state owns them and intends to lease and sell them at full cost to new farmers and that the state will lease and sell to both groups of new farmers where they can form effective contracts or to individuals where this is transparently a feasible option.

Rental charges for use of such infrastructures or for their price when exercising the “option to buy” should be valued on the basis on the full costs of developing these infrastructures as established by independent valuers. Standards of full cost recovery charges for appropriately inventorialised and valued infrastructure should be set.

Once these policy clouds are cleared, model rules and regulations for group utilisation of infrastructures can be designed. Infrastructure sharing can be promoted on the basis of coordinated agricultural production, output processing and infrastructures expansion plans promoted by extension specialists, and given due legal recognition and support by financial institutions. In general however the capacity of GoZ land and extension personnel to monitor land use and infrastructure utilisation and maintenance, and the capacity of its land information system (LIS), let alone its capacity to mediate disputes that arise over the use of infrastructures is quite limited.

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Those who do not use the infrastructures adequately could be reallocated to land with less infrastructures or be compelled to grant access to other farmers or the infrastructure could be excised and turned into state or share equity property owned by groups of other new farmers. GoZ agricultural policy should deliberately provide targeted subsidies for the development and improvement of farm infrastructure. The benefits of this subsidy should be spread to those A2 plot holders without infrastructures or access to common or sublet infrastructures, as well as to other smaller farmers in A1 and communal areas. This subsidy should be transparent and contingent upon visible production outputs (eg tax breaks, reimbursements). New farmers suffer viability problems due to the high capital requirements to erect essential infrastructure on farm including curing facilities, dipping facilities, pack houses etc. In most cases such facilities are only used sparing and represent a significant drain on the farmer. Where these can be shared among many farmers government can encourage agencies to invest in such lumpy infrastructure for custom servicing to farmers. This can be accomplished through provision of financial incentives as well as an enabling regulatory environment facilitating such developments.

Enhancing access to farm equipment and machinery is also critical in this vein. Recent legislation intended by the GoZ to facilitate the full utilisation and sale of movable farm equipment (by former LSCF owners to the GoZ and new farmers), which are on the farms or have been warehoused off the farms, to prevent vandalising of equipment and to restrict the export of the same, should be reviewed. The moral justification for this approach, which essentially veers towards the expropriation of these, including limiting their removal from farms by landowners who may still use some of them on the land if they retained some of it, is very questionable. Moreover the implementation of this new act could not only broaden the litigations over land reform and lead to more, not less, technical disablement of equipments. Implementing this legal provision would only serve to further sour relations between landowners and the GoZ and thus affect the speeding up of negotiations over the downsizing of former landowners’ farms. They too should be encouraged to engage in farming to

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enhance productivity and to facilitate technology transfer. Policy incentive for private machinery and processing services (tillage, harvesting, processing of tobacco, etc) should be designed and targeted at both farmers with the equipment and, existing and new firms. These services provided by the state should be encouraged to become more efficient, while targeting better their subsidised services to the poorer small farmers.

7.7 Profitability and MarketsCurrent price, marketing and trade policies affecting agricultural commodities should be redirected towards the increasing producer incentives. A pro-farmer policy should encourage the development of dynamic competitive commodity markets, remove the taxes on farmers arising from price controls and legislated market monopolies (e.g. GMB) and move away from providing blanket subsidies to all urban consumer. These policy changes which have very significant positive impact on farm profitability can be implemented immediately without resource investments from the government. As previous grain marketing liberalisation demonstrated, in the rural areas close to urban markets, competitive private trading can be restored almost immediately if the GMB relinquishes monopoly marketing. However, remote areas may be left without markets or be subject to exploitation by spatial monopolies. It is in these regions where parastatal markets need to maintain a presence as government facilitates the development of competitive markets in the long term. Marketing policy should craft innovative strategies for improving livestock off-take from communal areas through measures such as the custom feeding schemes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. To boost export crop production policy should extend foreign currency retention benefits currently enjoyed by tobacco farmers to crops such as cotton and soyabeans.

7.8 Social ServicesFood SecurityThe GoZ should design a multifaceted but integrated programme for targeted food consumption and incomes transfers for the poor, including most vulnerable groups (HIV-Aids affected including orphans, female headed households, poor peasant families), the rural poor and disaster victims and the urban poorest. These types of interventions could be part of a more broadly defined agricultural

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and social “recovery” programme. Such a programme should address direct aid food relief, state food relief activities which include public works programmes, support to commercial food market interventions, intervention in the demand side of rural and urban food markets through targeted and phased subsidies, and various subsidised supports to food production among the poor, including for timeous inputs supply (to farmers and inputs producers/ importers) and for irrigation capacity utilisation. The GoZ should re-establish its Strategic Grain Reserve, using various procedures that need design, including a specified irrigation support fund, mobilized from the GoZ and donors, for the strategic grain reserve maintenance, as well as other conducive policies to support the optimal use of irrigation resources.

The government should continue to target some specific social groups of newly resettled and communal farmers with subsidized access to inputs for socioeconomic and developmental reasons, as well as mobilise external aid support of these, through various schemes. The inputs production industry could be subsidised by transparent policy measures (tax, duties, transport, etc). The smallholder farmers, especially the socially vulnerable could be subsidised through targeted vouchers entitling the bearer to pay less for the specified inputs and the seller to collect the balance from government. The voucher program should be accompanied by training and supervision of recipients in the application of the inputs on their farms. The farmers from A1 and communal areas who rely on the parallel market for their input supplies where prices are considerably higher than official price and often match import parity prices, should be futher supported through incentives for private and public agencies to expand their import and marketing infrastructures in these areas. These targeted programmes should be part of the wider agricultural and social recovery project.

To enhance food security in the short term, the rehabilitation of existing irrigation infrastructure should be undertaken at the minimum rate of 15,000 hectares per year, while the development of new irrigated areas should be done at least minimum rate of 10,000 hectares per year. More efficient low cost irrigation systems (e.g. low cost drip systems and treadmill pumps) should be

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promoted to increase the area irrigated. The foreign currency component needs to be mobilised, so that the unutilised water in existing and new dams yields returns to investment.

In addition to these requirements targeted directly at the poorest, there is additional need to support food markets development through interventions that can assist SMEs in rural areas and townships to improve their capacity not only to import food, but also to mill grain and distribute it in disadvantaged areas. This should complement the already recommended initiative to provide the larger private grain milling and inputs manufacturing firms with forex support to import and distribute cheaper grain on a targeted basis. But these interventions would require transparency and close collaboration with the state.

In urban areas subsidies could be realised for the poorer by lowering their wider basket of consumption costs, through the differentiated pricing of water, electricity and related services, and increasing the prices of these for industrial and low density suburbs, rather than continuing with blanket food and inputs subsidies, which transfer budgetary resources even to the wealthier. But direct food transfer to the urban poor will remain critical in the short term.

Apart from the support for direct food consumption, a wider set of food security support instruments are required, e.g. redressing the shortages of hybrid maize seed in Zimbabwe, which are covered in other sections of this paper. At least about 1.3 million small farmer households in communal and resettlement areas would require 75% of these seed. To this should be added the fertiliser necessary for their recovery. This type of assistance is essential if Zimbabwe is to avoid chronic food shortages and to resume ‘agricultural growth’. As many experts suggest that there is a need for a new strategic thrust is to integrate emergency relief programming with long-term developmental goals.

There is need to address the food insecurity of poor urban social groups through an aid based price subsidy, and various other market-based mechanisms, which could be designed to support this strata and to address rural and urban food market problems. The basic foods which remain unaffordable can only be

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ameliorated in the immediate term by targeted food subsidies, but this can impose price discipline on the food markets, if there is early front-loaded delivery of large volumes of cereal. This is necessary to break the current chicken and egg impasse focused around pricing policy, availability and access interrelationships, which are heavily influenced by the urban biased monetised transactions in food. In the short to medium term greater subsidies towards enhancing rural production for food security would then work to bring balance to food price and market operations.

Farm WorkersThe GoZ should refine its policy measures in support of former, retained and new farm workers. It should produce a coherent and integrated policy statement in consultation with relevant stakeholders and ensure that it is widely disseminated in relevant government ministries, throughout RDCs and local government offices, among farm workers and their organisations, to new farmers and to NGOs. Elements of this policy are discussed below.

The policy should focus on creating viable rural communities through the creation of rural service centres and hamlets for provision of services to farm workers and new settlers in A1 areas and for non-farm entrepreneurs and workers within resettlement areas. Such centres should be built around some of the centrally located existing farm compounds. These should be augmented in area and excised from A1 and A2 land subdivisions. These centres should be turned into state properties governed by local authorities in collaboration with farm workers, settlers and relevant government agencies, within the existing hierarchy of settlements and administrative structures. This rural service centre programme could be initiated on a pilot basis in every district and expanded to all resettlement and remaining LSCF areas over the following five years. Government, the various stakeholders and humanitarian support service agencies should contribute adequate resources to this project, through which satellite social services can be provided.

The GoZ and NGO partners should incorporate a clear-cut, gender based component into the proposed refinement of policy on farm workers and particularly with regard to support for former farm workers. The aim should be

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to both enhance the rights of women farm workers with respect to access to land in their own right, the security of their land tenure on their own and jointly held land, greater protection of their labour rights, including their appropriate grading, remuneration and contractual arrangements, and to ensure that they also gain adequate retrenchment benefits. In addition to this, their social vulnerability should be relieved by ensuring that they gain adequate access to identity and citizenship documentation as part of a programme of providing comprehensive social support (schooling and health), food and nutritional assistance, HIV/AIDS effects support, and economic rights (land tenure, skills and extension training, farming and housing subsidies etc) for vulnerable women and children. Adequate budgets, personnel and innovative gender balanced intervention strategies should be designed by specialists in this and incorporated into GoZ policy and programmes. This effort should ensure that gender proficient agencies, professionals, women’s representative organisations and women farm workers are adequately involved in policy design and programme implementation.

The GoZ, NGOs and relevant stakeholders should undertake a detailed survey to document and plan for the long term and large-scale provision of social and related services to farm workers and new settlers, especially those in A1 areas. These should include health, HIV/AIDS, nutrition and food support, education and literacy, skills development and beneficiation, small enterprise management and labour relations management activities. Such a plan should form the basis of coordinated social service provision based on adequate resource mobilisation by all the stakeholders and the GoZ. The target should be to raise per capita provision of social services to at least the levels obtaining in other service centres. These services should be backed by tax incentives and subsidies for employers and farm workers to contribute to the development of various social services.

The GoZ should re-launch its mobile services for the provision IDs and passports to farm workers through the Home Affairs and Immigration departments, in collaboration with farm workers’ organisations, farmers and NGOs. The target should be to complete this documentation process within five years. The

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amendments to the Citizenship Act that were passed into law recently will facilitate this activity. Furthermore, all stakeholders should increase their allocation of resources to this process.

GoZ policy should aim to provide all farm workers, particularly former farm workers, with access to adequate land either for farming (of the A1 type) or for residential purposes (including room for food and nutritional gardens). Such access should be backed by secure title to the land in the form of long-term inheritable leases. Policy incentives (tax breaks) should be provided to employers to support the building of suitable housing for farm workers. Programmes to assist farm workers who could build their own houses should also be designed. This means that the GoZ should speedily move to allocate more of the currently unallocated land to former farm workers so that they attain a level of 15% of the land redistribution beneficiaries, either as new farmland owners or as residential landowners.

HIV/AidsThe scope of agriculture’s losses to the pandemic is not well understood and should be further studied for appropriate action at district and national levels; and future impacts projections. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and other agricultural institutions are encouraged to map sectoral responses to help reduce HIV infection rate, by particularly reducing conditions that promote risk as well protect the country’s productive potential in both the small scale and large scale sectors of the economy.8 It is argued that HIV/AIDS must be mainstreamed into agricultural policy, without duplicating efforts of the Ministry of Health and in particular the extension in service should adapt to the new challenges presented by the disease.

The agricultural sector can help in mitigation of the consequences of HIV/AIDS, having a responsibility to those who depend on agriculture. The focus should be on strengthening food and livelihood security and sustaining productivity. To achieve this, suggested recommendations include:8 For example, farms and agro-estates could be discouraged from setting up or promoting single sex working or living arrangements (dominance of females on horticulture farms) which increase vulnerability to infection.

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1. Innovative and new technologies and practices are suggested to minimise impacts on the vulnerable labour intensive farming system and maintain production capacity, these include: usage of lighter hand tools for the weak; mechanisation of agriculture; crop diversification; usage of disease resistant varieties and traditionally neglected/underutilised crops (e.g. cassava and millet); promotion of usage of herbicides; adoption of conservation agriculture; and promotion of small stock such as goats and sheep.

2. Rural development programmes to promote application of indigenous and agro biodiversity knowledge in tackling production problems. The use of local resources and knowledge is sustainable and can help reduce AIDS impacts on the household, as it is not solely depended on external inputs.

The GoZ needs to adopt the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations recommendation that the agriculture sector should focus on vulnerability reduction, which deals with the background environment in which risk behaviour takes place. Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement can then work with Ministry of Health and Child Welfare (MOHCW) achieving synergy with its policies that reduce vulnerability and Health’s policies on reduction of risk. The following policies and strategies are suggested: Promotion of farmer field schools where can farmers learn from each other

about issues ranging from agricultural production to the dangers of AIDS. Revision of extension content and delivery of services system, in particular

the extension messages could carry information on HIV/AIDS, and in conjunction with health officials create platforms such as field days, workshops for agriculture and health promotions.

GenderThe way the Fast track land resettlement programme was undertaken as well as the legal framework that influenced and guided the process were not gender sensitive. Zimbabwe could be informed by the gender related activities of the South African Land Reform policy, particularly the need for a Zimbabwe Land Reform Gender Policy Framework aimed at creating an enabling environment for women to access, own, control, use and manage land as well as access credit for productive use of the land There is

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therefore the need to come up with a Land Reform Gender Policy Framework which set out details of women’s concerns together with solutions. This document would feed into the National Land Policy and will be guided by principles set out in the recently launched National Gender Policy. The framework would assist to guide land reform in the aspects of gender.

Given that land redistribution is gendered, based on underlying inequalities in the Zimbabwean society, and given the significant involvement of women in the agricultural sector, all land redistribution documents need to be gender sensitive in addressing the needs of both men and women if all sections of society are to benefit from land allocation. There is also need to remove gender discriminatory obstacles that appear in the constitution (Section 23.2) and laws such as inheritance that inhibit women from participation at all levels of land redistribution.

Furthermore, there is need to allocate and implement a quota system in relation to administrative structures that administer land, ensuring that women are adequately represented and that their needs are not overlooked at all levels, from the headman level, chief, Rural District Council and District Administrator levels.

Gender sensitive indicators and gender analysis should be incorporated into all documents dealing with land as well as the National Land Policy. The government and all other stakeholders should comply with international instruments like Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). There is need for an elaboration of policy on equitable gender–based land rights, providing it with a firm legal basis, operationalising it and mobilizing capacity to ensure its implementation and effective monitoring.

7.9 Natural Resources and Environmental ImpactsSince the establishment of conservancies and game ranches, key ethical questions have been raised on the wisdom of setting aside large tracts of land for wildlife production when the majority of the country’s population is failing to

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produce enough food on the small pieces of land allocated to it. This can be satisfied if the natural resources utilisation policy embarks on two programme components: one targeting A1 type landowners and the other A2 type farmers. The first component should focus on developing broadly based integrated natural resource utilisation economies at the local level, targeting the poorer and small landholders. It will aim to develop untapped resource potentials. The second component should be based upon expanding and beneficiating the more conventional existing natural resources exploitation practises and enterprises such as forestry, wildlife based tourism and fishing, crocodile farming etc. This component should target the better resourced landowners (A2s and some self contained A1s, LSCFs, conservancies, forest estates and public sector ventures (ARDA, forestry commission etc). These programmes will require different sets of policy frameworks with different emphases in terms of developmental and commercial strategy and policy incentives.

The main objective of this policy is to contribute towards promoting poverty reduction by broadening and supplementing the income base of small farmers beyond mainstream crop and livestock production.

In line with the above proposed policy objectives, strategies and interventions, an additional effort should be initiated immediately to address the special needs of protecting and augmenting specific endangered species and their habitats. Strategies for such support areas are discussed below. Protected species, which include rhinos, wild dogs, plants etc, are known already by the Parks and Wildlife Management Authority should be allocated appropriate land sizes and GoZ support. This should be based on the GoZ undertaking.

However, a comprehensive inventory and sub-plan should be made of the private farmlands and public landholdings where these are, in relation to whether they were acquired and redistributed or not. Those acquired should then be re-planned according to their land size requirements and reallocated to beneficiaries who meet specific qualifications to manage such resources. These criteria should include requisite ecological expertise, finance, time commitment to management (e.g. full-time managers hired), and adequate labour resources

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as designed by specialists. However, the beneficiaries or participants could include other investors such as local private sector entities, NGOs and external donor partners. Long term no cost leases should be provided for effective managers of these resources, as well as appropriate subsidies provide in relation to the income earning capabilities of the projects.

The Forestry Commission should invest in the development of small woodlot plantations with all new A1 and A2 farmers who produce tobacco but do not have alternate energy fired barns. This project should aim to minimise the use of indigenous woodlands and degradation in general, and to improve access to exotic wood fuel for the tobacco curing needs of new farmers. A spatial inventory of the farmers and area targeted for such woodlots over the next ten years should be undertaken and a plan developed to define the resources required, outputs and returns of such an investment. The GoZ in collaboration with all the other stakeholders in the private sector and NGOs in the tobacco sector should mobilise resources for these on the basis of providing long term credit to new farmers and providing explicit woodlot subsidies such as cheap seedlings, cheap technical advice, duty free tree processing equipment, and tax breaks related to the long gestation period required to establish woodlots.

The GoZ should immediately commission experts (government, NGO’s and private) to produce a series of land use options for the management of natural resources at different scales and to suit different combinations of natural resource utilisation objectives. A new Model A3 should be introduced comprising the variety of options and articulating land use practices and cost-benefits. This should include adapted Campfire schemes, large and small conservancies, individual and group equity schemes, small woodlots and medium to large-scale forest estates, micro-resource management projects, small capital intensive projects (e.g. crocodiles) and specialist plant and animal species protection projects. These projects should be widely disseminated through an extension and information activity specific to this.

There is a need for a devolved land management and administrative system to enhance sustainable management of woodlands and forest plantations in former

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LSCFs. This however, does not mean that the government loses overall authority on the farms. The state could enhance its presents on the farms by placing extension and policing agents who will oversee natural resources utilization. Issuing of title deeds or leases will also help by creating incentives for settlers to sustainably manage trees on their properties.

The GoZ and existing private and public forest estate managers should develop a joint forestry outgrower project aimed at involving potential smallholder forest producers around existing plantations and in new areas where such potential exists. This project will aim to broaden participation in and incomes from commercial forestry, direct land use towards actual land capabilities and expand the forest sector based upon targets to be developed by the Forest Commission and relevant stakeholders. Land use options based on flexible farm sizes should be designed specifically for this and an investment partnership plan produced for this scheme. This outgrower scheme should complement the larger scale equity schemes aimed at redistributing some forest estates.

Realities on the impacts of land reform on forests and woodlands are not that alarming, at least in the present context. However, there is a need for the formulation of new policies to take care of the interests of officially resettled farmers. Policies should ensure that new farmers have full control of the natural resources on their newly acquired land holdings. This is particularly the case for farmers settled under the A1, because of the existence of dual allocation systems in A1 schemes. Farmers own individual arable plots (privately) while they graze their cattle on communal grazing areas, and this creates the risk of tree cutting, overgrazing and, ultimately, massive deforestation with little or no replanting of trees. There is thus a need for a strong tenurial base to help new farmers take ownership of their environment through better farming practices, as well as to control squatters.

The GoZ policy and local authorities’ should be to develop a programme which more formally recognises and supports gold panning activities in a manner which not only regulates the activity but which also provides incentives for the sustainable exploitation of these alluvial resources. This should include

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incentives for reclaiming pits through tree and grass planting, and the improvement of the security of gold panners. This will complement existing GoZ policies and regulations on gold panning but reorient the policy to combine the ‘stick’ with some ‘carrot’. GoZ should invest some of the foreign currency exchange gains and revenues that it gets from the sale of gold into this project, and provides tax incentives to gold panners and buyers to adopt more sustainable panning procedures.

There is a need for the Ministry of Environment and Tourism to develop a comprehensive inventory of sites with alluvial soils containing viable gold deposits and of actual gold panning sites according to their spatial provincial distribution. This should form the basis for designing a plan to guide gold panning support, improved environmental management promotion and, to monitor the benefits from gold panning and potential export earnings and revenue including the potential to levy local taxes for alluvial pits and erosion management. A register of gold buyers and panners should be kept and used to promote the security of the latter and provide incentives and extension for panners and buyers towards improving gold panning enterprise and natural resources conservation. Local associations of gold panners should be encouraged for such support to be effectively channeled and local authorities, NGOs and schools mobilised to undertake the reclamation of pits and eroded sites, together with gold buyers and panners.

The GoZ should immediately revamp its natural resources conservation and utilisation extension and training programme to address continued degradation of natural resources in general and nip in the bud actual and potential degradation in new resettlement areas. This should be done in a manner that provides incentives for the productive and sustainable use of such resources. The Ministry of Environment in collaboration with MoLARR, private sector and NGO actors involved in land use and natural resources conservation and utilisation activities should develop a 10-year extension programme for A1 and A2 areas. The aim should be to promote viable natural resources utilisation resources conservation and resuscitation strategies, investment strategies and

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relevant skills development. These should be based upon disseminating well packaged and short natural resources based land use pamphlets.

A natural resources sub-sectoral sub-plan of the 10 year Targeted Production Plan, should be produced by the GoZ. This should refine the above objectives, provide an inventory of sub-sectoral (wildlife, woodlands, endangered species) projects and micro-projects according to province and agro-ecology, and define the public and private resource allocations to be made and the outputs expected. Such a plan should be reviewed against implementation each year, and used to guide public and private resources mobilisation for sustainable commercial and environmental development purposes. The GoZ should mobilise external resources for this sub-plan based on the fact that the natural resources will contribute to global public goods (e.g. carbon sink, species heritage, etc).

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